τ'he History of Ideas in Chinese Medicine: Part I
Early
Chinese Medicine
Warring States to Tang Dynasty
the Evolution of Ideas & Techniques
with
Selected Characters
Jeffrey
C.
Yuen
New England School of Acupuncture Continuing Education Depa民ment 。2008
The History of Ideas in Chinese Medicine: Part I
Ea�抄 Chinese Medicine Warring States to Tang Dynasty
"Jo
obtain the Dao, one must study what s tudy does not give."
Jeffrey C. Yuen
6 -7 March 2004 New England School of Acupuncture Continuing Education Department
。2008
Edited by Stephen
Howard, Lie. Ac 沁1Ac. DiplAc & CH, (NCCAOM)
Ac knοw�redgtmren ts
Transcribing
Many thanks to
h但ay Liao for her recognition an
&
support of
extraordinary tradition
The History of Ideas in Chinese Medicine, Part I
lE rll 1f a W
(Warring S tates to
Jeffrey
Tang Dynasty)
C.
Yuen
Table of Contents
I.
Introduction.............................................................................................................
1
The岛1ythological Beginning................................................................................
2
Legendary Founders of the Culture & Its Medicine ..........…...............….
2
Pan Gu Chaos and Creation ................…...............................….......... Fu Xi, Shen Nong, & Huang Di .........…............................................….. The Ideal Rulers: Yao, Shun, and Yu ................…...............................
2
A.
1.
2. 3. B.
14
The Language.…····························································································· 16 1.
II.
10
Pictographs............................................................................................. 16
Philosophical & Religious Influences ............…......................…..................….. 19 A.
B.
C.
D.
Early Worship ............................................................................ . ................... 19 1.
Devotion to Ances try............................................................................ 19
2.
Sacrifices & Worship to the Earth God ...............…….........…............. 20
The Fang
Shi ....................................................................... . ........................ . ..
22
1.
S hamans, Teachers, & Physicians .....................................…............... 22
2.
The Rites of Zhou ........................................................….......…............. 25
Emergence of Philosophical Doctrines ....................…...........”…...........“.. 30 1.
School of Naturalism .........…·“..................................…........................ 30
2.
The Legalists ………………………………………………………………...............…32
3.
Mo Zi & Univeral Love.................…................…......................…......... 34
The Three Rel1g1ons ....................................................................... .............. 36 1.
Daoism ........……......................…...............…................…........................ 36
2.
Confucianism ..................….......................“··“············…...............“....... 43
3.
Buddhism ........................”··“…···········································“................. 44
4.
Their Influences in Chinese Mythology.…........….........................”.. 46
5.
Qi & Its Various Connotations .…................….....................................
46
III.
IV.
Medical Corpus - The Nei Jing............................................................................ 49 A.
Su讥len ............................................................................................................... 52
B.
Ling Shu ........….................................................................................................. 55
C.
Tai Su ................................................................................................................. 62
Modalities of Healing .................................................................….......................... 62 A.
B.
C. V.
Acupuncture & Its Early Roots ...............................................….................…. 62 1.
Eleven Channels & Cauterization/Moxibustion ..….......…...............….. 62
2.
Stone Needles to Iron Needles .........…..........................................…....... 63
3.
Location of Acupoints .......…......................................…........................... 63
4.
Wu讥lei & His Influ ence .......…................................................................ 68
Beu Cao - The Herba ls ..................... ............................................................... 94 1.
Shan Hai /iug Mounta in & S ea Classic .........…..................................... 95
2.
Shen Nang Ben Cao...............................…............................……................ 98
3.
Tao Hong Jing & his Shen Nang Ben Cao .............…..................….......… 100
4.
Sui Yao Xiug Lun New Trea tise on Herbs from the Sui Dynasty....... 101
5.
Xin Xiu Ben Cao
Newly Revised Herbal.. ........................................... 103
Emphasis on Preventative Medicine ......... ......... ... ............ .... ............ .... .... ..... 105
Prominent Figures & Their Contributions .............................................…............ 113 Cang Gong.... . .........…....... .......................………........ ........... ..... 113
A.
Chun Yu Yi
B.
Qin Yue Ren
C.
Zhang Ji
D.
Hua Tuo ................................................................….........“................................ 126
E.
Ge Hong.............................................….................................................….......... 128
F.
Huang Fu儿们＆ the Jia Yi Jing ......... . .. .... ...... . .... .............. ................. .. ........... .. 132
G.
Wang Xi
H.
Chao Yuan Fang & Zhu Bing Yuan Hou L un …..... . .….. ..... .... ........ ................. 135
I.
Sun Si Miao & Qian Jin Fang ....................….........…..................…................. 138
J.
Wang Tao & Wai Tai Pi Yao …….... .. ....... .……............. .... .. ........ ........ ...…. ...... 142
K.
Wang Bing & His Editions and Commentaries ................................…......... 142
L.
Cui Zhi Di & Steaming Bones ........................“...............”..............”...........…142
M.
Sun Si Miao & His Theory of Phlegm .... ......................... ............ ......... . .... ... . 144
Bian Que & the Nan Jing .......................….......................... 117 Zhang Zhong Jing & the Shang Han Jia Bing Lun ....….......... 121
W剧增Shu He & Mai Jing........... . ............ ......... ...... ................ 134
Tht liistory of ldt�s in Chinese Mtdidnt P"rt l
Earlv Chinese Medicine (Warring States to Tang Dynasty) ’＇To obtain the Dao, one must study what study does not give.”
6 March 2004 Introduction
I would like to begin by thanking all of you for coming to this weekend’s introducti on to the history of Chinese Medici ne, in parti cul ar a survey of the idea s that have developed wi thin the hi story of Chinese Medicine. I have l abeled the series: Early Chinese Medi cine, and then m oving i nto what I consi der Innovative Chinese Medicine where som e of the early theories that devel oped in Chi nese Medicine were being challenged, and then finally what I call Medici ne in Crisis, a s China began to be more and m ore exposed to medical system s from other cultures, and subsequently how those m edi cal systems get interfaced, get i ntegrated into Chi nese M e d i cine and, in som e cases, chall enges Chinese Medici ne as a whole. What we are going to be d oing today i s looking at some of the earl y concepts and the way they d eveloped, and som e of the phi losophers that are associated with these con cepts, and how they got integrated into Chinese Medicine. Then what we will move into i s the key textbook that is often associated with Chinese Medi cine and some of the changes that occur in that textbook, at least that we know of from readings from other commentators, rea ding from i nnov ators who have developed other tradi ti ons of Chinese Medicine. If you l ook at your h andouts, they are really to help guide me through the lectures so I don’t deviate too much. As some of you know, i f I don’ t have handouts, I have a tendency to deviate, and while the tangents that I go on might be useful, sometimes it d oes not allow me to cover the extent of the material that I want to present in each class. If we look at the fi rst aspect of Chinese Medicine, we can say that we are looking at a period that inclu des the W arring States. This is often under the umbrella of the Zhou Dynasty . From the W aηing States to, in parti cul ar the Tang Dynasty, ending in the 1 0th century, at l east the beginning of the 1 0th century is where the Tang Dynasty comes to an end . The Tang Dynasty is often referred to as the Golden Age of China . So there are a lot of innovations that begin to take place . There’s m ore creati vity and greater organi zati on of the materi als of Chinese Medicine begins to take place. 。New Engl and School of Acu p u ncture & Je陆ey C. Yuen 2008
There i s a quote that I want to begin with, and that i s， ”To obtain the Dao, one must study what study does not give.” Thi s is very i mportant. This is 出e i dea that you want to learn hi story, not just because you want to learn the facts. History i s always subj ect to i nterpretation. Rather, you w ant to learn history so that you begin to see how i deas evolve, and it provokes you, in a way, to learn to become innovative as well, and to come up with your own theories pertaining to what it i s that you practi ce, and in some cases to further expand on what it is that you practi ce. So hi story, in a way, allows us to see the roots from which we come. To the Chinese, the fact that you call yourself a Practi tioner of Chinese Medicine means that you carry a very big responsibility, because it comes from many lineages. It comes from m any traditi ons, and part of what you are really saying i s that you honor the traditi on, the heritage, b y which you basical l y pra cti ce that a r t o f healing that Chinese Medi cine comes from . So there is a certain degree of responsibil i ty that one must uphol d, and part of that, to me, i s that you need t o know i ts roots; you need t o know i ts hi story . Obviously that’ s w h y you are interested in 出i s type o f class, and that’s why I want to complement the Continuing Educati on Department of NESA for trying to include this in their Continuing Education Program . As you know, from a financi al point of view, not too many conti nuing education d epartments are going to be interested in history, because most students are going to be interested in getting protocols and new i deas for how to do trea tments, so they are m ore i nterested in the clinical i deas. But I want to suggest to you that by learning the hi story, you are going to h ave a lot more clini cal i d eas than anyone else can teach in a class abou t clini cal s甘ategies, per se. I.
The Mythological Beginning A.
Legendary Founders of the Cul ture
&
its Medicine
We know that Chinese Medi cine, as wi th any culture, because the culture is inseparable from the medi cine, has a mythol ogi cal beginning. We commonly think of these mythological figures as not only the founders of the culture, but al so the founders of i ts m edicine. The m ost common ones that you probabl y have read abou t are usuall y what i s referred to a s the Three Legendary Emperors: Fu x；伏杀 , Shen Nang 神晨 , and Huang Di黄帝 . These Three Legendary Emperors, actually they are three among five; there are really five Legendary Emperors . These are just the onl y three 出at we tend to focus on because they tend to give us more inform ation about the creatio日of a culture and subsequently how that cul ture begins to develop into a medical culture as well. 1.
Pan G u - Chaos and Creation
Before them, there is the legend of Pan Gu盘古 . Pan Gu is very often depicted in Chinese drawings as this giant who hold s in the center of his hands the Yin and Yang symbol . Thi s symbol that you know of as Yin and Yang was devel oped during the Song Dynasty . The one that has the sine curve with the two circles in the m i d dle, that’s not the traditi onal depiction of Yin and Ya n g . 2
©New En g land School of A cu puncture & Jeffrey C. Yuen 2008
The traditional depiction of Yin and Yang is simply a circle split in half, where you have a shaded side, the Yin si de, and the bright side, the Yang side. There’ s not thi s notion that we think of as the Yin Yang symbol . That picture of Pan Gu, we know, woul d date back to the Song Dynasty . It’s a pi cture of this primitive l ooking indivi dual who hol d s in the center of hi s han d s the Yin and Yang symbol . It is sai d that Pan G u represented the movement of Order from Chaos. In Chinese mythol ogy i t i s said that Chaos gave birth to Water. So, Water is already rooted in Chinese m ythology. Water is the root of all Creation, as we know of it in terms of Chinese Medicine: the Kidneys as the basis of Pre-Natal existence . It says th at Chaos, with the formation of \!\Tater, gave birth to two forces, the Yin and Yang forces, just like the Ki dneys give birth to its Ki dney Yin, Ki dney Essence, and its儿1 ing λ1 e n Fire, Ki dney Ya ng . And these two forces, these Yin and Yang forces, basically began to develop into Pan Gu at the center of Chaos. So out of Chaos comes Order. \!\That is the ordering force? What then i s the organizing force o f life? Yin and Yang. And this organizing force emanates from the basi c components of Water, and then we have Pan G u . By the way, Pan can mean a basin, so think of a basin holding onto Water. And Gu simpl y means very ancient, very ol d . So we have a very old b a sin, thi s i dea of a basin contai ning ＼八later, Earth storing Water, and Pan Gu i s in the center. It’s said that Pan Gu with a mallet and a chi sel, begins to chisel away at Chaos, bringing more Order into the universe. An d it says that in a period of 1 8, 000 years he was able to finally create what we would call the natural forces of life . They say that as he was chi seling away, he was also growing each day. It is said that each day he grew six feet. As he was growing and growing, he was absorbing into the world and becomi ng part of the worl d, just as he' s molding the worl d . So again, there is this endemic idea that not only are you creating something, but you are also part of that which you create. There is no separation in reality between the doer and the thi ng th at is being d one. Here it says th at his head became the mountains, hi s breath became the clouds, his eyes became the sun and the moon, his veins became the rivers, his hair became the trees, and the insects that were infesting him became humans. So humans basical l y g rew out of these l i ttle insects that were on his body. Thi s is defi ni tel y one of the most important myth ologies that we have about the creation of the worl d . Endemic in thi s mythology are some medi cal ideas: that life is rooted in \!\Tater, that Water has two organizing forces, Yin and Yang, which basically allows things to become created as we think of the Moving Qi of the Ki dneys that emanates the Yin and Yang and allows for the production, and that Moving Qi of the Ki dneys also has an Ascending nature . It is a l so growing up. It i s not d escending . It’ s like Pan G u, growing on a day-to-day basi s . And as it grows, what it says is that it is basically creating life, bu t that life is inseparable from who you are. So that’s one of the first myths that we have. \i\Tithin thi s myth, it says that there were the Five Ancients that grew out of the crea ti on that Pan Gu m a d e . Those Five Ancients include the Yel l ow 3
。New Engl and School of Acu p u ncture & J effrey 巳 Yuen 2008
Ancient, Huang Lao, the Red Lord, Clzi Di, Xuan Di, the D ark Lord, the Wood Prince, Mu Zhu and J in Mu, the Metal Mother. So obvi ously what we see in thi s mythology i s also the idea of the Five Element Theory . The Five Elements are there, and actually these term s d i d not have much signifi cance in Chinese medi cal l angu age, but they definitel y have a l ot of signifi cance in Chinese religious l anguage. You can go to temples that are erected to, for exampl e, Jin Mu, the Golden or the Metal Mother. In fact, among the hierarchy of the Chinese Immortals, she is very high on that scale. She is often associated with what they call the Queen Mother of the West, another very popul ar Tang Dynasty God that a lot of people associ ate with as Jin儿1u. You can also go and find in Daoist templ es things that are erected to the D ark Lord . The D ark Lord, in fact, for those of you who practi ce Tai Ji, i s the patron saint of Tai Ji Clzuan，讥＇u Da n Mountain. If you ever go and visit Wu Dan Mountain, it i s said that the principle temples were erected to thi s Dark Lord . Di, as they often refer to him, the Northern Emperor, or sometimes referred to as the North Dipper God . Again Di' s do have very important religious connotations and they are part of the myth of Pan G u . That is: Pan Gu gave birth also to the Five Directions, a n d h e gave birth to the Five Elements . Again, obvi ously the mythology is developed very much l a ter on . It is definitely not p art of e arl y Chinese wri ti ngs, but neverthel ess, wi thin the context of Chinese cul ture, these are the beginnin g myths, the Myth of Creation. They say that out of these Five Ancients emerged the True Ruler, Slza ng D i . Slzang Di is transl ated a s the Upper Lord or the Upper Emperor. The Di is the same Di as i n Huang Di. I am using the word Lord, because a lot of times
they don’t necessarily see them as ruling, but more or less just presi ding over something, watching, observing, not necessarily demanding this be done or that be done as in the role of an emperor. He is sai d to preside over the 33 Heavens. The Upper Lord, the Slzang D i, \vhi ch by the way, if i t’ s u sed in modern terms, it means God . It is a term from Chri sti ani ty that has influenced the way Chinese represent God, the Upper Empero巳the Upper God or the Upper Lord . What they say is that what you have essenti ally is the Ba G ua . In the B a G u a you have Eight Directi on s a n d the Nine woul d be right in the center. Within the Eight Directions, what you have are Four Mythologies: Tai Yang, Shao Ya 1咚， Tai Yin and Shao Yin . If you take four and you superimpose it onto the
eight, you have Square.
32,
and with
3 3,
the nine is the l ast of that so-called Magi c
What I mean by thi s i s, i f you consi der in China the a gricultural fiel d, which is called Tian, the field in Chinese is often divided into nine sections. Each of these sections represents the directions: South (at the top of the square), North (at the bottom ), East (on the left) and West (on the right) . So what you have, in terms of directionality, are the Eight Palaces . The Eight Palaces also translate into the Eight Curri culums of one’s life. We'll get to what that means in a li ttle while.
4
。New Engl and School of A cupuncture
& Jeffrey C. Yuen 2008
What they are saying within this set of Eight Curriculums is that you have four body types: Tai Yang, Slzao Yang, Tai Yin and Shao Yin . This is how you get the 32 Heavens . Again, with the Nine, or what we call the center, that becomes 33 Heavens. So the general belief that comes out of this parti cular myth is that every one of us here, in our lives, has a certain body type. That is we are : Tai Ya ng, S hao Ya ng, Ta i Yin or Shao Yin . In terms of body morphol ogy, Ta i Ya ng basi cally means someone who is very well developed in the Yan g, the upper part of their body . Tai Yin is someone who is generall y very well developed in the l ower part of their bod y . Again, the degree of devel opment would suggest whether it is Shao, Lesser, or i s it Greater, Tai. And what they are saying is that e ach one of these body types has eight fundamental lessons that they could take place in that body in this lifetime. Those lessons could include l essons pertaining to Health . For example, a lot of you are involved with a curriculum dealing wi th Health . You yoursel f might not be unhealthy, but you are dealing with people that are unheal thy and you have been engaging in that practice for the bulk of your life perhaps. So that’ s a curri cu lum th at you are undergoing . Some of us here mi ght be undergoing the curri culum of what in Chinese is referred to as Wealth . That is, ever since you have been very young, you always come into situations 由at make you i mpoverished, havi ng to deal with finances, resources. Even though you might m ake a lot, you always find that money is very difficult. Money is always on your mind in terms of Weal th or things that connote Wealth. Some of us here might be going through the curriculum that deals wi th Prosperity . That is, we have enough Wealth, but i t seems like everyone around us i s very needy of what we can do. Some of us have those issues, that we might not be financi ally very weal thy, but we are very resourceful . As a result, our friend s, our chil dren, our spouses, everyone seems to need you . They always demand of you your resources. And as a resul t, tha t’ s always on your mind， ” I have this to d o for this person . I have 出at to do for that person . ” That could b e a curriculum o f your life. Those are often referred to as San Xing, the Three Stars, these three deities that became popul arized during the Ta ng Dynasty . You see them when you go to Chinese restaurants . You see them when you go to families' homes. They are often depi cted as three fi gures. In the center is this person who represents Wealth . He usually has the a tti re of someone who is some type of an offi cial . Next to him, he has on one side, the God of Longevity, whi ch represents Health . He usually hol ds the Peach o f what they call Immortality, and his head looks like a peach, a bi g head, Shou Lao as they call the l ong, elderly gentleman. And then you have next to the God of Weal th another person who represents Prosperi ty. Usuall y he is depi cted a s hol ding a chil d . That means that not only are you wealthy, but you are creating something out of your Wealth; that’ s Prosperity . These are called the Three Stars. These are three l essons . I deally, these are what most people woul d like to have in their lives. First you want to be healthy . Then after that you want to be able to feel that all your needs are being attended to. So you are, in essence, wealthy. And then you are abl e to provide and share your 5
。Ne＇、， En g land School of Acu puncture & J effrey C. Yue n 2008
Weal th wi th others as well, Prosperity . Those are the three fundamen tal components . That’ s \vhy when this gets put under Five Element Theory, they put those under Wood and under Fire, because Wood is 出e beginning . Endemic in life, if you don’t have Health, you don’ t have anything . This is very important to the medical schemata . If you have Health, then everything else can come from that. So those are the first three l essons and then out of that Prosperi ty, as I have talked abou t with the God of Prosperity, is the ability to get involved with individuals that can now look i n the same direction as you are moving in. That i s, individuals who share w i th you a comm onali ty of i d eas, or at l east com plement you in what it is that you feel is missing in your life. So they call that the Pal ace of Romance, Love. It is no l onger about myself, that I feel adequate; I’m heal thy, I’m able to be resourceful and I feel I have enough. Now can I go and see that with someone else? Can I be abl e to live with someone else and be the same component with someone else? That’ s love. And maybe that’ s been your i ssue most of your l i fe . You have enou gh m oney, and you have heal th, but you can ’ t seem to fin d som eone who compl ements you in a rel a tionship. Or you can’t find someone who seems to be exactly like you in a rel ationshi p . You can ’ t seem to find l ove, rom ance . So love could be the predominant issue in your life . That’ s another Palace. That's another Heaven. When we achieve it, we are in Heaven, regardless of what lesson it i s . When you feel you have achieved it, in many ways, you feel you are in Heaven . Then the question, among philosophers, is: was it destined to be, or was it due to your own efforts? Thi s is one of the m司or themes that you are going to see debated among phil osophers. Some philosophers say that there is su ch thing as Ming, Destiny, and others woul d say, "No, that’s terrible to believe that if you are poor, it was meant to be, and that you do nothing about it.” They are going to dispute that saying， ”There is no such thing that you are born with something. You have your own free wil l to try to change it. ” And we'll l ook at some of those phil osophers, because there’ s going to be very different ways in how it is applied to medicine . If someone is destined to be i ll, that means you basically sit back and allow that di sease process to take place, wi thout necessarily the assumption or the feeling that you can eradicate i t, or at least that y our client can eradi cate their condi tion, because出ey have free will . You see, it becomes a very fundamental ethical question within medicine that we see already being d eb ated among Chinese practi tioners early on in Chinese Medical history . Once you beli eve that there is such thing as destiny, that something is already meant to be, then you can’t alter i t. But if you believe, to the con廿ary, that you could change destiny and that you could al ter it, that means that you are going to be able to, as a clinician, work on Meri di ans that represent destiny and 甘y to a lter those Meri dians. That’ s what you are really doing . You are doing it as a form of genetic engineering . Of course, in early Chinese Medicine, the debate that wins out is the one that says that destiny is decreed by Heaven, and that we really can’t change it. Consequently， 由is is why we see in earl y Chi nese Med i ci ne, very l i ttl e d i s c u ssi on abou t Eight 6
。New En g l and School of Acu p uncture & Jef仕ey C. Yuen 2008
Extraordin ary Vessels . That’ s a philosophical undertaking that i s being debated over and over again. Then of course Confucius wins the debate, and Confu cius beli eved that there is such a thing as Heaven’s Will, that there is a Consti tutional aspect, that thi s is set up thi s w a y and you can’ t really alter it. That’ S Confu ci ani sm . Then there are going to be peop l e who would d ebate that. Nevertheless, this is one aspect of that. So Romance, that’ s another Heaven and after Romance is having children. Those of you who study Feng Slnti probably know of these. These are called the Palaces in Feng Simi, Chinese geornancy . Children, Creativi ty, what you are able to do with someone else, or on a greater scale, with the world and something 出at will benefit the worl d . The \vhole i dea of having children is to be abl e to benefit the worl d, from an earl y Confucian point of view . Granted, in the ol d d ays, children were a commodity . I f you are coming from an agricul tural soci ety, the more chil dren you had, the m ore l aborers you had, tilling the farm, tilling the field s, the greater your producti vity. That’ s very different than modern times. In modern times, chil dren are often seen more as a financial liability . As a result, in modern tim es, we have a tendency to have fewer chil d ren . Early cul tures, pri m i tive cul tures, a gri cultural societi es, or even if you look and consi der farmers, m any of them like to have l arge families, because they become more of an asset that will help, rather than a liabili ty . In any case, Children are often the depiction of that, but to a greater degree i t’ s Creativi ty . How many of us here are doing something that we feel will be a marker that we existed in thi s l i fetime, that reminds people of our existence becau se of something that has been very constructive, that has benefited humanity. It could be writing a book. It could be doing artwork. It could be something that allows you to demonstrate that you feel very anim ated about what it is that you can give to the worl d . In the old days, that would have been your children . Your Children live throu gh you . So that’s another Heaven that we can enter. From there, they talk about the Pal ace of Travel, the Palace of Adventure. For some of us, most of our interest in our lives has been going out into the world and real l y searchi ng for som e type of adventure, something abou t the world that excites you, and you are always out there searching, l ooking, trying to find something, or trying to explore something. \Ve have many peopl e like that. They literally can never be at home. They are always on the go. It could be on a microcosmi c level . You can’t si t still even in your chair. You have to always be searching for something, entertaining your mind, reading something, listening to music. As soon as you get home, you have to turn on the radi o or tel evi si on, turn on the computer. Any tim e that you are given the opportunity to rest, you really don’ t take yourself up on that opportunity. Adventure is your l esson. For you to sit i dl y by, you woul d say you mi ght as well simply die, as we see sometimes with people who have that parti cul ar curriculum, who enter nursing homes and die relatively early . So adventure is another component. Question: You know the context when we have talked about travel in the way that you were describing it, particularly when we talk about the Meridians as pathways, frequently the noti on of travel and adventure has been described as a 7
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d etour, a diversion from the Primary Pathw a y . Is there that ki nd of val ue judgment made in this case? Or i s there also positive aspects to that travel and adventure? Answer: Okay, yes, to both actually. In regards to Stephen’s question, as you all know, the idea of life is that we all have some primacy as to what it is 出at we are trying to seek, what it is that we are trying to do in this life. Any detour from that pri m a cy, b ecause you are searching for something, per se outsi de of yourself, can be thought of as a collateral, as a detour away from the Primary Mer啕 i ans. So this line represents the Prim ary Meri dians, the Jing 短 ， and anything that devi ates away from that would be seen as a Collateral, because we are j u st indivi duals th at get easily di stracte d . And once you do that, it sometimes begins to takes you away from the true Self. It’ s almost like one of the common archetypes that we see of someone who is in the Adventure Palace, the story of the Prodigal Son, who ultim ately has to return back home at the last m om ent and realizes that he d i d n ’ t reall y need to search anywh ere el se. Everything that he reall y needed was at home. The Prodigal Son would have been that type of story . The Chinese have those types of stories too. One of the famous ones that many of you are probably familiar wi th is the Dream of the Red Chamber, thou gh not in thi s tim e period . I t’ s one of those stori es that has practi cally all of these Palaces in there. That’ s why i t’ s such a powerful novel to the Chinese, because it gives you all of these stru ggles that we have in l i fe. Included in there is the story of the Prodi gal Son . So what you have is, every time we begin to deviate from the pri m acy of ou r lives, we are creating a Luo Vessel . We are bringing Bl ood to experi ence something that might not necessarily be where we need to go. And that Blood then begins to get occluded. I t begins to become Stagnant and you have these vi sible blood vessels that we see. This would be an example of that. But on the other si de of thi s issue, '"'e would say that Adven ture can be posi tive, because sometimes part of the Luo Mer讪ians is that, while we tend to think of them as pathology, part of the Luo Meridians is that they give us other options as well, that we are able to go and see other opportuni ties as wel l . And a l ot of times, it mi ght be simpl y being able to have time off from the primacy of everything that we need to do. There is a posi tive end to that as well, because part of the L u o Channel is to give us tim e, to serve as reservoirs, as holding vessels, to al low u s to reflect more. And then hopefully they give us the insights as we begin to return back to ourselves, that enable u s to l et go, to Empty these Luo Vessels back to ourselves, but in the form of moving through the Stagnation rather than all owing the Stagnation to move deeper into out bodies, or into our lives. That’ s the Adventure Palace. From there, there is another Palace that comes with searching. That Pal ace is Career, Vocation, Profession. That i s, how comfortable are you right now in the career, the vocation, that you have chosen for yourself? How comfortable are you being an acupuncturist? How comfortable are you being a practi tioner of Oriental medicine? How comfortabl e are you seeking to have a career in that fiel d of Oriental medi cine? Noti ce, what is the theme? It’s very Confucian in 8
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some ways, that it is a career that not only benefits society, because then endemic in that i s a process of creativity that I can use my creativity in this career, rather than work in which maybe the career is really not the main issue that you are l ooking for. The m ain i ssue that you are having trouble with is the Weal th Pal ace. You are l ooking for a career that will m ake you a lot of money . And, maybe you read somewhere that acupuncturists m ake a lot of money and as a result you decided to devote your time to stu dying acupuncture. So then C areer isn’t really your true Pal ace. Wealth is your true Palace. That' s going to be the m ain issue. So Career is about finding something that we feel comfortable with, that emanates as our ability to be of benefi t, to be of service, to society. That’ s the Career Pal ace. Then there are those of us who, rather than seeking an external sense of creativi ty, l ook inward . That inward l ooking is known as VVisdom. So we know w e are going to the Water Element, Water, Career and this whole idea of inward movement i s the idea of Wisdom . Wi sdom i s inner knowing, from which, according to the legend of Pan Gu, all possibilities come. So again, this very basic theme that Water is a predominaηt force of life. You are going to see it in Daois m . I n the Dao D e Jing, they mention Water a s the predominant factor that we need to return to. And even in wri tings of Neo-Confu ciani sm, we see again thi s idea of \iVisdom as coming from the Element of Water. So those are called the Eight Pal aces of Life and they represent the Curriculums. What they are saying is that we have different body shapes (4), let’s say you have a Tai Y们zg body shape, whi ch m eans that you are defi nitely going to be more involved in actually going out, because it is more developed in the upper part of th e body, the arms, the cerebral, the intell ectual part of the body . You are real ly going to go out there and i t’ s m ore like a hands-on sense of how am I going to get Weal th? You might be much more sensual when it comes to relationships. It' s a much more hands-on approach to Romance. So then what they are really saying is that w hen you look at an individual, you have body types, morphology, and this morphology has a certain Curriculum that they are living in thi s life. And those become the 32 Heavens of human existence . And then the ability to transcend all of those lessons of life, becomes the 33rd Heaven. whi ch is sometimes referred to as the Center. We are in the Center of thes � Palaces, which is where the number Five i s usual l y depicted, so that you have gone through all transform ations, all cyclical possibilities, and you are now j u st one step behind the Lord that i s on the High, Shang Di . You are one step nd erneath that \A.1hi ch represents Compl etion. So you will see this aga·n · Chinese religions that have adapted to thi s, so regardless if you are looking at Confuciani sm, Bud dhism or Daois叽 （that i s Buddhism influenced by Chi ;ese culture） ， 出ey often talk about the 33 Levels of Heaven. This i s where that concept com es from, from the creation of what they refer to as the Ba Gua. Basi c ally what we are l ooking at is the Yi Jing (I Ching ) . The Yi Jing i s j u s t another interpretation of these, because we all know that w e are going to have a combinati on o f Curriculums. I ca口 have a situation where. yes, I was thinking abou t money . I am also thinking about acupuncture as th �
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best way of making money, bu t also doing som ething that will benefit society . You have a Curriculum of C areer and Wealth. So that’ s a combination. That' s a hexagram, in terms of the Yi Jing . This i s what I mean by the 33 Heavens. That's part of the constru cti ve aspect of Chinese Medi cine which describes that each one of u s i s born wi th a p arti cul ar M ing 命 ， as in M ing Men . The word M ing m eans not just life, but that we are all born with a certain Mandate, a certain decree. And that decree i s given by Shang Di, the Lord of the High, which later on gets replaced with Tian, Heaven. So you have a Celestial Mandate that thi s is what has been willed to you, (Kidneys, Will), by Heaven . 2.
Fu Xi, Shen Nong,
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Huang Di
As we move into the Three Legendary Emperors, these were indivi duals who are basically associ ated wi th the creation of a society . In other words, what I am suggesting to you is that Fu Xi伏袭 , Shen Nong 神 晨 and Huang Di reflect the process of the development of an agri cultural, an agrari an 帝 黄 soci ety, which in the early part of Chinese civilization has a bureaucrati c, feudal type of state. There are a l ot of feudal l ords . They are fi ghti ng against each other, trying to take over an empire or trying to create an empire. What you have with Fu Xi i s an individual whi ch i s often depicted as hal f human and half animal . He’s half beast and half human. F u X i i s said to have taken Fire, whi ch was given to him by the first Legendary Emperor, Sui Ren . Sui 地 has the radi cal for Fire火 and what you have next t o i t is the character, Sui 遂 ， which means to Expel, u sing Fire to Expel, u sing Fire to cleanse. And Ren 人 means the person . So Sui Ren is the individual who is considered the first Legendary Emperor . Thi s person took from Heaven, Fi re, and was able to transform that Fi re into a very creative energy that will help to increase popul ation . Sui Ren i s sai d to have taught Fu Xi how to make use of Fire in the process of cooking. Now the depi ction of Fu Xi as being half hum an and half beast also demonstrates the evolu ti on that is s甘ongly believed among the Chinese. That is the saying that i f you look at an animal that is on all four legs, an animal on all four legs gathers most of their Qi by absorbing Qi from the earth. So that Qi from the earth goes into the center of their abdomen where Earth is located, the Spleen and Stomach. So according to the Chinese, animal s are able to eat things raw . A pred ator i s able to kil l an anim al and eat the flesh raw . They are able to eat leaves, fruits raw. They do not cook, because 出ey have all this Yang energy that they are absorbing from the ground, coming i nto their Stomach, coming into their Earth Element. But once you become half beast and half human, as Fu Xi i s depi cted, while he is associated with domesticating animals, h e i s also associated with being no l onger anim al, but also hum an. So what happens when you become upright? You lose the upper part of your body in terms of extrapolating Fire from the Earth . So a ccording to the Chinese, with the invention of Fire, all foods should be semi-cooked . We know that this continues to be a belief in Chinese Medi cine, that they always warn you, do not eat raw things, even raw 10
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meat like sushi . Even some of the great clinici ans like Zhang Zhong-jing, Sun Si M iao, warn that i f you eat raw meaιyou are going to have Worms. You are
going to have maggots, because what they see is out of flesh are maggots that eat their way out. So they believe that that you are going to get these maggots . So Fu Xi establi shes the idea that if one has a weak Spleen and Stomach, you don’t have enough of Stom ach Fire, what you are going to need to do, as Hua Tuo will later on develop, are exerci ses that involve you walking on all four legs, like an animal, to absorb Qi back from the Earth, and you have to eat cooked foods. You can no l onger eat raw things. So thi s is one of the depicti ons of Fu Xi, not only because he domesti cated animals and he now u ses Fire for cooking, but the noti on is that he makes the correl ation between how ani m al s are really more cl ose to Earth; they get all that terrestri al Qi. While humans are now the bridge between Earth and Heaven . Between Heaven and E arth lies Humanity . That comes from Fu Xi. And how we understand that humanity is created, understanding the forces of Heaven and Earth, is referred to as Fu Xi's, or Pre-Heaven Yi Jing (I Clzing), the Yi Jing of understanding that everything in life based on Heaven and Earth, and has a cycle, is cycli cal . Again, this is going to be taken up by Daoists. And with Fu Xi, we have one associ ati on of the Yi Jing, whi ch is that by understanding animals, because that's part of the depiction, you understand how animals are living in synchroni city wi th nature. I t i s easier to observe animal s living in nature than observi ng na ture itsel f. Observing the plants is a l i ttle m ore complicated, but with ani m a l s you begin to observe very easi l y . Animals hibernate at certain times, animals begin to mate at certain times. They were observing the animals . And as they were observing the animals, and learning to take care of the animals, what 出ey are really learning is how to take care of these animals that they are going to domesticate. And we know that in early Chinese history, the animals that were domesticated were pigs and dogs. Those were the hvo basic animals that were domesti cated first, before we think of cattle or oxen . Pigs and dogs were the ones that we see. Horses, remember, did not become really a maj or part of the Chinese civilization until the Tang Dynasty . That’ s why those of you who are famil i ar with Chinese art, whenever you think of horses, they always talk about the Ta ng Dynasty horses. Those are 出e ones that are often depi cted . In fact during the time of the Ta n g Dynasty, in the whole civilization of China, just before the Tang Dynasty, they only had, according to documents, abou t 800 horses . By the time they get into the Tang Dynasty, they had 50, 000 horses . So you can see the big increase in horses as part of the Chinese culture. Prior to that their reliance is mostl y on chariots that were pulled by horses, but they really didn’t have that many horses. Question: Just a quick questi on with regard to animals having their ventral surface closer to the Earth . You were describing that as one of the conditions for absorbing Ya ng from the E arth . In most situations I’m aware of, I’m thinking more of having 出at contact with the Earth and absorbing Yin . So the Yang aspect is . . . maybe you can talk about that a little bit.
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Answer: Yes, well here is where the difference is that Heaven above is Yang and Earth below is Yin . So here what they are really saying is that E arth i tself has a l ot of Ya ng Qi that we can absorb through our hands and feet, whi ch are very Yang . Our hand and feet are where the Jing Well Points are located and as the body absorbs that, it concentrates into the Stomach. It concentrates into the Center. Once we begin to separate from there, we move into the upright posture, and the theory shifts to say that Qi doesn't go to the Center any longer; Qi goes to the chest. So there is also now a big division; if we are no l onger beasts, all the energy doesn’ t go to the digestive tract. All the energy goes to the chest and to the Lungs. So it is still a Ya ng Q i, because they are still thinking of movement. Al so, during the early Chinese medical period, the focus is primarily on Yang Qi. The focus is reall y on Yang Qi and not so much on Yin . Yin is always in context to Heaven and Earth . So this is where that lies. So we are not thinking so much that they are absorbing the Dam pness or the Cold or something . They are actually absorbing Terγestri al Qi, w lich by itself is a form of Yang Qi. Now what we have is domesti cation . We watch the animals; ,,ve become like a naturalist. We begin to see some basic ani mal behavior in relationship to the seasons . And as you know, Fu Xi is often associated with the Yi Jing . Because the Yi Jing represents change, he is observing the changes in nature. If I am abl e to observe change in nature, what it is going to allow me to do is to be able to start predicting what kind of changes are going to occur in nature. The predi ction of changes implies cycles, seasons, and allow s me now to be what? An agriculturalist. I cannot stu dy agricul ture if I don’t know and am not able to predi ct how nature is going to change. I know when to plant, and I know when to harvest, by observing nature. So now, Shen Nong i s referred to as the Divine F armer, or sometimes he is referred to as the Fire God, because he is often depi cted as very red . He is bathing in the sun . He is making u se of that Fire energy. He is domesticating, and cooking animal s, but also cooking pl ants and now we are also beginning the process of pl anting, because wi th the predi ctions of the cycles of nature comes the beginning of an agri cultural society . Shen Nong is depi cted as the God of Chinese Medicine as wel l . He has obvi ously been given a high tribute in the Ben Caos; there are two Slzen Nong Ben Caos . One that is said to have been the recording of Shen Nong’s idealogy in terms of classifi cation of herb s and then later on Dao Hong-jing is going to re-do Slzen Nong ’ s Ben Cao, taki ng the 365 h erbs th a t are in Shen Nong’ s Ben Cao and increasing i t substanti al l y . There is a very b i g differenc� between Shen Nong’ s Ben Cao and Dao Hong jing's Ben Cao. That is if you were to read a passage from Shen Nong's Ben Cao, l ooking up an herb and l ooking at the indications of that herb, as we know Shen No ng ’s Ben Cao is broken into three grades, Upper, Mi d dl e and Lower grades.
The Upper, which was the focus of that era of time, was preventative. It was to to nouri sh and nurture life. That was primary. You have 120 that were to help in nourishing life . The second, the Mi d dle group, was more for restoring things that have gone wrong bu t is now starting to heal and now trying to restore. So trying to regenerate, trying to restore the imbal ances th at occurred, those are another 1 20 herbs. And then the last 125 herbs, again, it’ s the 365 in relati onship 12
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to the days of the year, just l i ke we have 360 A cupuncture Points i n early Acupuncture . The i dea of the l ast one, the Lower grade, was for treatm ents . Now i f you read Shen Nang’s Ben Cao and you compare it with Dao Hong甘ing's version, the indications are going to be different. The reason why is Shen Nong is not a m edical doctor. He i s a farmer. He represents agri cul ture. That means what you are doing you i s using the crops not to heal, but to sustain life. That means that every ti m e he i s ingesting a pl ant, he is seeing what it does for a person that i s a lready healthy. So the functions are going to be very different than for a person who is sick. Dao Hong-jing was a medical practi tioner. He is now going to write a Ben Cao that is going to be based on those who are a lready ill. That is why the indicati ons are very di fferent. Just imagine that I had a cup of peppermint tea, if I drink that, i f I am rel ativel y hea l thy, i t’s going to just simply have a mild calming effect. But i f I am ill, I mi ght start to sweat a little . I might start to feel that cramping in my stomach has eased a littl e, because that is the therapeuti cs of peppermint to someone who is sick. So the functi ons are very different. Thi s is also very important to the hi story of Chinese Medicine, that when you are reading a textbook that describes plants, is it wri tten by someone who i s a medical doctor, or is it wri tten by someone who is just describing the properties of a plant after ingesting it, when they were pretty much heal thy? So it’ s a big difference already in that end .
Slzen Nang i s associated wi th agri culture, and he i s also associ ated wi th
teaching the people how to h arvest the Five Grains. The Five Grains in China included millet, but not ri ce . Ri ce was a later addi ti on to the grains that \Ve use in China, even though ma口y of us probably associ ate rice with the Chinese culture . Millet was the principle grain. The other grains that are associ ated with Slzen Nang were wheat, sorghum, sesame seed (whi ch i s actually classified as a grain that Slzen Nang taught the people), and rye . Those were the Five Grains that are associ ated with Slzen Nang teaching the peopl e how to harvest and grow these grains . Again, millet was the most popul ar grain in the earl y part of the Chinese culture. Think of millet. Millet is something that is very nourishing. It is one of the grains that is a non-glutinou s grain . It Nouri shes Yin . It Generates Stomach Flui d s . So consi der that you are eating things that are now being cooked, whi ch potenti ally can have a l ot more Yang Qi to i t, but you are having grains that are rel ati vel y Yin, balancing in m any ways. Millet Nouri shes and Generates Stom ach Flui d s . I t’ s the m ost Yin of all the grains that are non glutinous. So i f you need to produce Stomach Yin or Liver Yin or Ki dney Y巾， it is going to be millet that is going to be the grain that you would recommend, provi ded the person has enough Stomach Fire . If you are just eating that and you have a vegetarian type of diet, and you are eating a lot more raw things, then that millet will produce Dampness, because you don’t have enough Stomach Fire to balance the Yin that comes from the millet. Then comes Huang Di. So now, what do you need if you are going to be an agricul tural society ? You are going to need a water source. The Chinese civilization developed along the Yellow Ri ver. Huang Di is more of a concept to represent a person or a group of people that essenti al l y governed them selves along the Yellow River. Huang Di is associated with developing the compass. 13
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We need a compass i f we are going to do what? Navigation. He i s a ssociated with developing the wheel . That means that as soon as you have agri cul ture and you have crops that you are harvesting, with wheels, you have trade. Let’ s bring i t to another village. Let’ s trade with them, and l et’ s go and develop an area where everyone can trade, and now that i s going t o be a metropolis. A city i s goi ng to develop . S o basically the Yellow Emperor represents a civilization that i s developing. Of course with these things that you harvest, you have to have storage containers . Huang Di i s also associ ated with i nventing pottery . So all of these things, while it is credited to him, i t i s reall y representative of what is happening in a cul ture. That’ s what i t really is. If you look at these Three Legendary Emperors, they basically represent the process of the development of an agrarian society . Once you have a better crop or a better season than the nei ghboring village, we are going to get jeal ou s . C a n you share som e o f those crops with us? No, i s your answer and you start to go to war. You are going to have a lot of little states . And these are very tiny l i ttle states . In fact in the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, which dates back to about the 1 1 th Century B.C.E., you have in China i tself, among these little states, over 2000 littl e states . That’ s a l ot of little communi ti es fighting with each other. Later on, you are going to have seven to eight m aj or states developing as they begin to conquer all the little ones . It is al so important to understand that when you look at the Yellow Ri ver and how China as a civilization is developing, the Yellow River and the valley along the Yell ow River is prim arily san d . So it i s very difficult to find stones . It is more of a sandy terrain . That is why China as an ancient civilization does not have, like Greece and Egypt, maj or monuments. We have no pyramids. We have no Pantheon or any of these reminders that an ancient civili zation lived . The only thing that we have in China, that is ancient, is the Great Wall, and that was built in phases . Becau se the soil along the Yel l ow Ri ver \Vere so sandy, you couldn ’ t really find l arge rocks to serve as a foundation of creating monuments . That’ s w h y you don’ t reall y s e e tha t with the Chinese . If anything, you see things that are buried beneath the groun d . But you don’t reall y see m aj or monuments that were being developed . 3. The Ideal Rulers - Yao, Shun,
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Yu
Associ ated with the Yellow River, because i t is sandy, the valley alongsi de it is much more subjected to flooding, overflow . Think of sandy terrain. It is a lot m ushier. I t is going to be su问ect to a lot more overflow and as a result, one of the earliest Gods that devd oped in the Chinese civilization are the Water Gods, the Gods that control the �,Yater, the Waterways. And that is why one of the l egends that came out of the Yell ow Emperor is going to be the legend of Yu the Great. Yu the Great is the Chinese version of Noah. He conquers the floods. That’ s where we move into the ideal rulers, Yao, Shun and Yu, Yu the Great. Yao, Shun and Yu were probably invented by Confucius. So even thou gh we give them a very early hi story, they were probably developed by Confucius
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because very often they are si ted in Confuci an works, like that by Mencius. Again the Ideal Rulers were often believed to have been created by Confucianists during the period during which Confucius lived, a period filled with chaos. You have all these ”warring states”. One of the Confuci an’ s basi c statements is that we need to return back to the past. 飞叫le need to be like these Ideal Rulers that essenti al ly took care of the people. When you look at Yao, Yao was sai d to have forged bonds with their neighbors . Yao was said to have li ved at a time when everyone in th e village could keep their doors open at night, when you di dn’ t have to worry about someone robbing you or invading you . Yao the Great is often associated with developing the Chinese lunar calendar. It is said that in his court, he had two trees. 飞机 th one tree, every day leaves would fall until the 1 5th day, when the leaves would stop falling and they would stop falling for another 15 days. Then they woul d start falling again as a measure of the waxing and waning of the m oon. That is how they measured the month . Thi s i s all obviously legend . And then he had one tree that had leaves that would fall every month . And each leaf that fell woul d represent one month that had passed . So every month, a bunch of leaves would have fallen and all the other days no leaves would fal l . So every month, a bunch of leaves would fall and that would be refl ective of a month. So that is the legend of the Lunar calendar, at least in Chinese culture. It is associ ated with Yao.
Yao was looking for an ideal successor. He m arried his two daughters to S h u n . Shu n was a nice person, and comes from a family where the father was
said to be very wicked and the mother was said to be a liar, insincere, and the brother was very arrogant and always picking on him . They say that in spi te of his circumstances wi th his family, very Confucian, that he was able to produce harmony among the family and as a result, Yao first made him a co-ruler and then subsequ ently made him his successor. What we associ ate wi th him i s the idea of astronomy . He is said to have been very much interested in astronomy . It i s during the time o f Shun, that at l east according t o the Confucians, that the worship to the Lord on the High, Shang Di, began. Again, Yu was basi call y like a surveyor general . He surveys the l and and he noti ced all thi s flooding that began to take place and what he did was he bore holes into rocks that he could find to help drain thi s water. It is sai d that he bore holes into 12 maj or rocks that allowed the waterways to drain, which medi cal history would say was the macrocosm of the 12 Meri dians of Acupuncture. They obviou sly were individuals that were noted for their benevolence to society, Ren, a term that Confucius used . When Confu cius went around to different Vv arring States, he would give these ruling kings the stories of Yao and Sh u n and Yu, hoping to convince them to return back to the state of exemplary individual s. Of course the emphasis that comes from Yao and Shu n is the idea of virtue, De, as well as Ren . Yu is also associated with righteousness . He did the right thing to benefit all of humanity . Yi is the te口口 that we give to that. Thi s is the earl y legendary founding of the Chinese civilization .
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In terms of how we extrapolate this to Chinese Medicine, you can already see that what we are looking at is the development of a theory regarding change, that everything in life is cycli cal . That would be associated with Fu Xi. We are seeing tha t you can take thi s cy cl i cal process and move it into a state of predictability. That is, if you can predict the phases that that things go into, the development of what we would call the Y i n Ya ng theory in later terminology, then what you are going to have is agriculture, which would be associated with Slzen No n g . Shen Nong would be represented by this divisi on of Yin and Yang in half. And with the Yellow Emperor, Hu ang Di, is now associated with taking thi s Yin Ya ng, this agricultural development and benefiting society . That i s again how you get a society devel oping, and the betterment of society, the Yellow Emperor. Yao, Sh u n and Yu are often said to be descendants of Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor. e F3
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The second aspect that I would like to pay attenti on to is the language. As you all know, the Chinese l anguage uses pictographs. Everything is written to demonstrate some type of imagery . �For example, the idea of the Yi J i ng, often you see it depicted, here is the sun， 将 and the rays of the sun coming down on all things. That’ s the early pi ctograph for the word that we call Yi 易 ， which is written like this in modern form . And as the sun ri ses above a plateau of the mountains, we take the mountains � . In other words, thi s would have been how it looked in pi ctograph !> , and then what we do in written form is we just took that mountain and 如e moved it sideways. And now you have the word, with the horizon on it, for Ym吆 喝 ， as in Yin and Yang . That is, when we look at the sun as it reaches the horizon, and then shines against the peaks of the mountains, all we did i s we have taken thi s and m oved it si deways vvith the word Yang and we put in the horizon that separates the sun from all animation, you have the word Ya ng. So that’ s a pi ctograph. A number of clinicians have basically described Chinese Medi cine by analyzing the pi ctographs of Chinese characters. This character that I just wrote was already standardized during the Han Dynasty . By the third cen tury B . C . E ., the l anguage that was written by the Chinese continues all the way up to the 20th Century . It’ s just that with Communism and the simplification of characters, we begin to see the characters a little bit differentl y . But basically it’ s unbroken. So that’ s why you can go back and read Ha n Dynasty textbooks and be able to understand it, because the words haven’ t changed, per se. This langu age has never really been abandoned. The written form was standardized by the Ha n Dynasty. The only differences lie in speech . That’ s the dialect. Sometimes it’ s not even a dialect, i t’s an entirely different speech, but the words are still the same. In terms of speech, we tend to fol low the standa_rd, the vernacular form, whi ch is Mandarin, the speech of the Mandarins, the speech of the elite. It’ s not j ust Mandarin. This was the language 16
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of the official court of the officials. So you want to speak the language of the elite. The other thing we need to consi der when we stu d y earl y Chinese Medicine is that when you are going to read or when I’m going to quote from some of the texts from Chinese Medi cine, keep in mind that there are different words that represent a text. Among the words that we have is the word Sh u . Slz u 害 simply means a book. That’ s all i t means . I t just means a book. When you carry a book to school, you often refer to that as simply Slz u, a book. Pian 篇 means a chapter. So sometimes I can take a chapter from a big encyclopedia and make that into a book. So a lot of times when you see the word Pian next to something that would mean that it was taken out of a bigger volume per se, and probabl y being further deemed as being very valuable, that real l y, of all the chapters you need to study, thi s is the chapter, the word Pia n . For example, al l of the chapters in the Su Wen are referred to as Pian. So that’ s another term . Just so that you understand where it’s comi ng from . The word Lu11 揄 ， as in the textbook the Slza11g Han L wz, has the radical for word, Ya11 言 . Ya11 means words. Next to it you have the phonetic Lu n 俞 which means something that is going and getting recycl ed, circular. So words that need to be recycled, words that need to be passed down are referred to as Lu n . So the Slzang Han Lun would mean that these were probabl y oral words that Zlzang Zhong-jing had spoken and now we feel a need to pass it down. So as a result, we create a treati se on his S伊oken words. And that' s why the Slza ng Han Lun most likely whenever you see the word Lun, even though we associate it wi th one author, most likely that was the author \vho had orall y spoken of it, but it i s written by someone else. That’ s why m any clinicians believe that the Slzang Han Lzm was not written by Zha ng Zlzong- Jing. It was his oral words, but it was written by Wang Slzu-Jze who comes later on. As we get into the S u i Dynasty, definitel y we see the SJzang Han L u n now becoming popul arize d . S o w e believe that m ost likely it woul d not have been a work that was done directly by Zhang Zlzong-jing . So that’ s when you see the word Lun . Question : I s there any implicati on that you have to get that from the person who heard it. You know, that i t’ s an oral teaching and then somebody wrote it down . But if you get the written version, i t’s not the same as if you get the oral version . Answer: Well, that’ s why the Slzang Han Lwz is the most commentated textbook in the history of Chi nese Medicine. Not everyone agrees wi th what is being written down. Question: Right, so whom do we believe? Like, in other 甘aditions . . . Answer: ＼月vhoever has the best story. Question: Well I’m just curi ous. Answer: That’ s u l timately what i t i s going to b e . Whoever has the more convincing argument is who you are going to believe. For example, I think I’ve 17
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mentioned this, as you know Craig Mitchell wrote the Shang Han L u n . It’ s a big book and it looks very impressive, but recently in the j ournal s in China, the Shang Han Lun practitioners are making fun of that book. They are saying, ＇’ Oh thi s person really doesn't have any understanding of the Sha ng Han L u n . They don ’ t come from the traditi on . " So this is Where you are going to have that taking pl ace . And again, that’ s why there is a big difference between just translating a book and rea l l y translating i t with the understanding of the tra dition or at l east coming wi th the guidance of peopl e that come from a tradition that can tell you， ”This i s what that word really means”． Qu estion： 阳ght, so in some other tra ditions, I.guess I’m curious because in other traditions there is a lineage of how that is accomplished . In other words, you can determine if this person has it from somebody, you know it’ s transmitted orally, person to person. So in a sense you don’ t believe anything that is written. You don’t tru st that because that’ s not actually the real thing . I guess that’ s what I’m . . . Answer: Right, yes, definitely. That’ s why the Chinese m ake a big fuss about the lineage tree. This person studied from that person, and that person studied from this other person, and so on . So you can see the whol e lineage. Unfortunately for Chinese Medicine, it’ s h ard because the lineage goes back so far. So at most what people can get is documentati on up to a certain point. Granted there are people who cl aim to come from very old Ha n Dynasty l ineages per se, and in some cases there is a Continuum where there is a community that can do that and regi ster that, but in medicine it is hard, because unfortunately in medi cine there is too mu ch arrogance and egos and as a result the communi ty that can regi ster that is not as common. For example, like in Daoi切z, we have and can see the registries of peopl e that goes all the way back to the Han Dynasty as being Daoist priests, because as a rel i gious community, there is that harmony to be able to trace it back. But for medical communities, it is much harder. Just to take an example on a very small scal e : Ta i Ji Ch uan developed in the Qing Dynasty . There are people who go and do the whol e family tree from this person to that person, down to where they are. That supposedl y woul d give you more credibility, bu t ultim ately everyone can trace back to someone along that family tree. And then the question is: how much di d you study with that one person? How much di d the person who studied from the previous one inheri t fro m that tradi tion, and that becomes the thing that everyone usually debates. As I said, ultimately it’s whoever has a better story . So the word Lu n definitely means an oral transmi ssion. That’ s why when you read the Dao Zang Jing, The Compilation of Daois t Writings, most of those books are called L u n . Daois t wri tings are usu al l y called L u n . I t’ s an orally transmitted traditi on.
Jing 短 is the classic, as in Nei Jing. We use 出at tenη quite casually, but keep in mind that the word Jing really represents some text that one shoul d revere . That’ s why all reli gious writings are also referred to as Jing, like Dao De Jing, Nei Jing. These are things that we are supposed to revere. Shen Jing, the 18
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Heart Sutra of Bu ddhism . Those are J i n gs . The word Clman 傅 means something very similar to the word for oral transmi ssi on, but Clzua n usually means something that was written and gets passed on to you, but now because the silk is in su ch poor conditi on， ”Let me rewrite thi s again, and then I'll pass it on” ． ”Oh gee, now the bamboo i s not doing very well, let me rewrite thi s again. ” So Cli uan usually means a tradition. Ch uan sometimes also means bi ographies . There is for example, the Water Margin, Sim i Hu Clma n . That’ s a very famous textbook that described bi ographies of the major bandits of China. But these are like Robin Hoods. These are all like heros. They were always fighting against the Imperi al forces to try to benefi t the good . It was a very Confucian wri ting an d it gives you the biographies of some of the most famous bandits in China . So it’ s a very popular textbook that we see in the Song Dynasty. So, are there any questi ons about the mythol ogi cal beginnings? That just gives us a general basis about the early philosophies that were developing . Questi on: Just a quick question with regard to Shen Nong. You mentioned the Five Grains and am ong those, if I heard you right, you said Sorghum . Is that ri ght? Sorghum, like a su gar? I think of sorghum like sugar. It’ s not? It is wheat? Answer: A form of wheat, yes. II.
The Philosophical and Religious Influences
A.
Early 飞rVorship 1.
Devotion to Ancestry
Now we go into the phil osophical and rel i gious influences. Inseparable from Chinese Medi cine i s philosophy and religion . You can’t really separate them . The whol e notion of Perverse Qi versus Upri ght Qi: that’ s a Confucian idea that there is something bad out there and it i s your moral responsibility to deal with that. That’ s the Upright Qi. That' s the Proper Qi. That’ s Confuci anism . Dao is m is going to have a big impact on Chin ese religious ,,vri tings as well as medical writings, because, again, the notion of Yin and Yang is very often pl aced u nder the auspice of D a o is m, even though you ’ H see it real l y devel oped separately from Daois m . It just gets integrated into Daois m . Remember that from all of these phil osophi cal and religious influences, they all have a motive when it comes to medi cine. To the Confucianists, the motive is Fil i al Piety, Xiao 孝 . There’ s one’ s responsibility to be able to take care of the family, and part of that responsibility is learning medicine. That was part of a Confucian duty, that you have to benefit humanity, because if you can benefit your family, then you’H benefit the society. A number of well -known practi tioners of Chinese Medicine basically were Confucian schol ars. Because their teacher was sick, or their mother was sick, or
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their father was sick, they then decided to move into the study of medicine due to their filial piety to their teacher, to their mother and so forth.
Daois m sought the understanding of medicine as a science, so it is not out of compassion . By understanding humans, we understand the macrocosm through the mi crocosm . To them, medi cine was a science. It was understanding the dynamics of how things operated. The motive wasn’t necessarily to save people, because Zhuang Zi would definitely disagree with that. Zh uang Zi says, ”＼!\Then is that moment of death going to come? I am waiting for it and waiting for it.” It puts forward the idea that everything in life basically happens for a reason. Illness serves a reason . We don’ t want to 甘eat illness, we just want to observe it and watch it. So for Zh uang Zi, for the Dao is ts, if anything, it is to observe and see what is the pathol ogy of it. So i t’ s more of a science in Daois m . For Bu ddhism, like Confuci ani sm, it’s just the terms \Ve use whi ch are a li ttl e di fferent. It’ s compassi on, that is, to try to reduce the sufferings of the worl d through the illness. So Buddhists are going to be intimately related to medi cine. All three of these d ominant religious, philosophical teachings that are going to be infu sed into the daily practi ces of the Chinese, and to an even greater degree, Oriental Medi cine. So the earl y religiou s worship i s worship to an cestors. We know that basi cally, if you think of the Neolithic era, the Chinese basi cally have three form s of worship, in truth, really two. That i s, you worship your Ancestors, and you worship the Earth God, \·vho controls the River God . The River God can be seen as the third one. First of all, there is the devoti on to Ancestry, Z ong 宗 as in Zong Qi, Ancestral Qi, which is located in the chest, because as we separate from the Earth, we begin to have that dynamic association with the world through the chest. Zong i s often seen reall y as an altar. So what you have is a tripod, (in the bottom half of the character) . Again, the Chinese are al ways into threes. Everything is in tri nities to the Chinese. Even when they make their vessels, their pottery is three-legged pottery . So here is the tripod . This is the trinity that we talk about. And what you are doing is, on top of 出is tripod, you are making an offering . And this offering is d one in a temple, in a hall (the upper portion of the character) . So now you take this and you put it into its written form, and you have the word Zong 宗 . Z o ng is an altar for m aking as an offering to your ancestors. So the notion here of Zong Qi is Ancestral Qi, because the Chinese do bel ieve in the after-life. \Ve’re very vague as to exactly what they beli eve . We j u st know that they believed that when someone dies, they move into another dimension . In that dim ensi on, they can exert an influence over this dimensi on. Later on we invent the i dea of hell, when Buddhism was imported into China. With Buddhism came 出e appearance of hell in Chinese religion. In any case, this was the first component. ，
2.
Sacrifi ces and Worship to the Earth God
The second, to an agri cultural society that can be ravaged by flooding, that can be ravaged by drought, you are going to have a sacrifice to the Earth God, to 20
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Tu 土 . Here is the earth 一 ， and you are placing right at the center of tha t earth, in the ol d days i t would have been a tree, 1 . In other words, to them, in ancient times when you start to create an agri cultural field, what you would do is clear the field and l eave a tree, one tree standing, and that tree would be the resi dence of the Earth God . So, the Earth God is not permanent, because if that family moves, and later on someone comes and destroys the tree, the Earth God really moves along with the family. They don’t really stay in that tree, but in the time that you are working in that field, that’ s where the Earth God lives. So this i s the tree, that is thi s stick that is emanating from the earth, and this tree with its branches 土 is supposed to \Vatch over the earth in the fiel d . And that’ s the word Tu, as in earth. So you have the Earth God and again, the word Tu represented h,vo meanings in Chinese . One, i t represented the soil that is being cul tivated, or cultivated soil for agri culture . The second representati on of Tu was that there was this Earth God that watched over the terri tory of the feud al state. Like a Lord of the earth, they watched over the territory of the feudal state which is why, to the Chinese, the Earth God is a male. It was a protector God . Whereas if I only went with the first definition, of the fertil e, cultivated soil, that would be a Fertility God, and th at’ s why in many other cultures the Earth God i s u sually seen as a Goddess. Bu t in China, it was always seen as a male God, because their second role was that they had to protect the l an d . They saw th at as a male functi on. That’ s why in Chinese, whenever they refer to the Earth God, it’ s always referred to a s a male rather than a female. And, the Earth God is sai d to presi de not only in this tree, but also in your home. It presides in five l ocations. That is it presides in the front and the back of your door. It presides in the hallway that goes from the front to the back door. At the same time, it also presides over the well of the house. So it is the front and the back door that we are l ooking at. It is the walkway, the side of the house and th e well . Those are the Five Sacrifi ces that are often offered . So they put a sacri fice in the front. They put a sacrifi ce in the back. They put a sacrifi ce along the corri dor. And they put something on the si de of the house, and at the well . This is important because if you think of the entrance, the front, that' s the mouth . T h e exit, the back door, that’ s the anu s . T h e long corridor wou l d be the alimentary canal, or what we would consi der this corridor from the mouth, all the way down to the anu s . So, when you are making a form of ”reli gi ou s" acupuncture, \vhich they also had, part of the treatment was to have treatments that made sacri fices, or that made an opening to the mouth, the anus, the lateral si des of the body, the corridor and the wel l . That well is the Jing Wel l . And by doing that, you would open the connection to the Gods. Just think of Needling the Jing Well Points, Needling Points around the mouth, around the anal region, whi ch again, they would not have been embarrassed abou t in those ancient ti m es, and Needling on the chest to opens the Portals, the Sensory Orifices that allow you to move tovvards a higher state of consciousness. Those are the Five Sacrifi ces. Endemic wi th the Earth comes mythology that, in the beginning there was this person called Go ng Gong 共 工 . And Gong Gong w a s this monster that 21
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had the body of a serpent. He had the face of a man. So a man and a serpent, and his hairs were bright red wi th horns on his head . He was basically constantly disrupting the earth, causing floods, causing earthquakes and so forth . So that Sha ng Di, the Lord on the High, that whi ch presides above the 33rd Heaven, sent h·vo of his generals down to 甘y to overcome Gong Gong . One of the generals failed . The other general came down and chased him all the way to the northwest corner of the worl d . And as he chased him all the way to the northwest corner of the world and Gong Gong was about to die, he took his horns and he smashed them right into the mountain that kept Heaven in alignment with earth . And as he smashed them into the mountain, it is sai d that the mountai n started to tilt towards the northwest. And this is why, to the Chinese, the Pole Star is never reall y at the zenith . It’ s always slightly to the northwest. And this is why the Chinese believe that the rivers in China flow towards the southeast. So thi s is their rationale for why th e rivers fl ow southeast and why the Pol e Star is always slightly at an angle towards the northwest. And this was Gong Gong pushing into the mountain that kept Heaven and Earth in alignment. And Go n g Gong’s son subsequently began to appease Slzang Di, and as a result, we have a harmoni ous relationship between Heaven and Earth and Gong . Again, you can see that I’m giving you a Gong’ s son is called Gou Long 勾 麓 description of the Dragon. Gou Long m eans the Hope Dragon . The word Long means Dragon. That' s the name of the son . And as a result, the Dragon was always associ ated with the Earth, as we see in geomancy when we talk abou t Dragon Veins on the Earth . And consequently, the Dragon is always associated with the fl oods as well, in China. So Dragon, whi ch is earl y on in Chinese mythology, was really associated with God of the Earth. Are there any questions about thi s earl y worshi p? Okay, let’ s m ove on then and l ook at the third aspect, the Fa ng Shi is what we are going to be looking at now. Question : Jeffrey, do they sometimes talk about the Dragon emerging from the ocean as opposed to the earth? Answer: Well, the earth includes the ocean. It includes the river. So all of that is like earth and water. Everything that is on the terrestri al level is considered the Dragon. B.
The Fa ng Slz i 1.
Wu, Shi, Yi Shamans, Teachers,
&
Physicians
Now we move into what is often referred to as the beginning of Chinese history. And now we are looking at the Fang Slzi 方 士 . So whenever we look at the Fa n g S h i, there are three ways of describing them . One i s Wu 巫 Sham anisti c . The other one is more as a teacher, Slzi 士 ， and the third i s the word Yi 薯 ， the physi ci an . \.\Then you l ook at Fang Slzis in the ol d days, they were practi tioners who trained through apprenticeship . Basically, you would teach one, and then when they graduated, that person would leave, and then they would go on and accept other disci ples. So there is definitely a long lineage 22
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of several generations associ ated wi th Fa n g S lz is . The way they operated i s basically the description o f these three words. The Wu would be shamani stic in the sense that you would not be able to explain how they function, how they work, how they are able to get the inform ation th at they get. The Wu is seen as an intermedi ary behveen two worl ds. Again, within the character for Wu you see the character for Ren 人 which means humani ty or humans, and i t’ s b asically a person whose head i s bowed t o be humbl e . It’ s part o f humanity . A n d with the legs, the l e g s are reaching forward . So you have thi s person, and thi s person is separated from another dimension where another person lives, whi ch is your ancestors， 巫 And, you are also separated from above, Heaven, and from Earth. So a Shaman goes into another dimension, that includes your Ancestors, or they go and talk to the Heaven or the the Earth Gods, Shang Di above, or Gong Gong below . In thi s case i t’ s Tu Di Gong Gong as we woul d call that later on, which actu ally changes two characters. Bu t that’ s the Shaman . And how they do it, we really don’ t kn ow . They go into a trance, or they might be beating a drum, which w a s very common in China at that time. Musi cal instruments in the form of drumming were very, very popular. And they would bring back information. The earliest practi ces that we see of Shamans is often wi th what is called the /ia Gu Wen, the Shell Bone Literature, which are the Oracl es. Those are the Bone Oracles. Usually, the the scapul a bone of an ox, so here is where we see ox being u sed for more Shamanic purposes, or th ey cou l d hc.. v e been shell s of tortoi ses. And generally the scapula bone that was most commonly u sed was the spine of the scapula, because endemic to the spine of the scapula is where SI-1 2 i s located . And SI- 1 2 is known a s B ing Feng, Grasping the Wind . S o what w e are trying to do is ”grasp change”， understand the change. Again a metaphori cal understanding of why they used those parti cul ar bones . What they would do is, on these bones woul d be imprinted, would be engraved a question. Th e questi on can range anywhere from about weather, which i s very important to a farmer, to warfare . Thi s would be a li ttle bit more on the nobility si de. Or maybe a question about i llness . What is the meaning of the illness? Or childbirth or som ething of that sort. For example, we know that there was a very famous Oracle Bone that was attributed to a qu estion of one of the Slza ng Dynasty rulers, around 1 200 B.C.E. His question was about his toothache . He said， ”I have a really bad toothache. Whi ch of my ancestors is causing it？” And on the bone i s carved Jia, Gan , Slzen, and Yi. Basically Jia was hi s father and the other three were his uncles. He di d not know which of these three was causing hi s toothaches. And generally after asking the qu esti on, on the bone there i s going to be two characters . One chara cter is ’＇lucky”， yes, and the other chara cter is usually ”n。”. So i t’ s l ike "Lucky or No？” Lucky woul d mean yes. So it’s not really telling him exactl y who, i t’ s j u s t that i f the answer is yes, h e would have t o g o and do Ancestral worship, do sacri fi ces to all of those ancestors . But at least it shows that one of them is angry wi th him . What they do is one side of the bone would be where the " Lu cky” is wri tten on it. And the other side would be where the "No” i s 23
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written. Rather than i t being like tossing a coin, the bone i s then heated up to a very hi gh temperature until the bone cracks, like the fire exploding the bone, i t comes u p from the ground and it l ands o n " Lucky” or "No” . That’ s why the Oracl e Bones in Chinese are called something in Chinese that’ s the sound of the popping noise that gets made. So Shamans practi ced through divination. That’ s one of the things that we know at least, tha t they were practicing through di vination. One very famous Shaman is known as B ia n Que. Bia n Que is the person that is associated with writing the Nan J ing . He is depicted and we have a stone relief of him dating back to the Han Dynasty where he is depi cted with a human face, but hi s body i s one of a bird . Some people think he might have been wearing a bird costume, that i s, wearing an outfit that has lots of feathers on it. He was a Shaman. That is one very common example of a Sham an . Mostly Shaman s were women, by the way . Even though Bia n Que is a male, most of them were generally women . The teacher, the Slz i, whi ch has two ch aracters to depi ct that, simply means the teacher. And what that means i s now you are able to at least give a rationale as to why someone has illness . You are abl e to come up with a reason to describe what it is that you are doing in terms of healing . A Shaman cannot expl ain what they are doing . In the true sense of the word, they go into a trance. They go into altered states. A teacher, a Shi, can explain what they are doing . There are cerebral and intellectual processes that are taking place and they develop that skill through cul tivation. The reason why we call him a teacher is because their role is really to tea ch you how to return back to a state of balance, not to intervene and use agents necessarily, whereas a physi cian, basically, is not necessarily going to teach you anything. They are just going to do something to you and you are going to get better. And they are able to explain what they are doing as well . The role of a S h i was not only to hel p you, but to teach you . Because remember the emphasi s is preventative medicine. If I teach you, you won’t get into troubl e again. If you have that low back pain and I did an acupuncture treatment and the low back pain went away, I’m serving as a physi ci an. But i f you had a low back pain and I treat you and I explain to you that maybe the l ow back pain is because of the way you are walking, maybe because the low back pain is really the message that you need to slow down, you need to start taking care of your life a li ttle bit more. That is serving the role of a teacher. You are doing more than just treating the low back. You are seeing the relationship that the lower back has with that person’s life and you are informing them so that they are given the choice to do something about that. A lot of times, these Slz is are associ ated with preventative medi cine. That is, they come and they tell you that you shoul d start doing something about this, and if you don’t take care of y oursel f, then something does happen . So again, B ian Que is som etimes referred to a s a S h i . Usually a Shaman can be all three and sometim es, in rare cases, a physi ci an can be all three as well . So the Wu, the Shamans, were associ ated with these Oracles. The Oracles have been known to having been practi ced already during the Slzang Dynasty . How we know of that is because we found an Oracle where they inspected the characters and found the name of a ruler who lived during the Shang Dynasty. 24
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We also know that there were descripti ons of these consultations that were being done in another textbook known as Zhou Cli ua n . Clman means a tradition, a biography . And it i s basically a biography of indivi dual s that lived during the Zhou Dynasty . It was wri tten during the Spring / Autumn period. The reason we call i t the Spring I Autumn Period i s because, remember I said that, in term s of the Chinese seasons, there were only two seasons in the early Chin a . You have the hot season and the cold season . B asi cally everything is gradations of hot or col d . Spring / Autumn Peri od i s where the Chi nese now have four seasons. They add to it the spring season and the autumn season . And that’ s why we call it the Spring / Autumn Period . It also is a refl ecti on of an actual period. But thi s i s w here now the Chi nese have four seasons in their cul ture. It is also important to understand that prior to the Ta ng Dynasty, physi ci ans were consi dered Arti sans. That’ s a Confu ci an concept. Confucians basical l y believed that there are fou r ca tegori es of i ndividual s : Schol ars, Peasants, Artisans and Merchants. Those are the four categories. Obvi ously, ]1111 Zi, a scholar is the most important: you are serving soci ety through edu cation. Then what feeds soci ety are the Peasants, the farmers . Then the Artisans are people that really don’ t benefit soci ety that mu ch . They are entertainers. They are people who \·\Te see during lei sure . They help make your shoes, or fix your shoes, or they may be musi ci ans . And medical doctors were seen as Artisans, because not everyone gets sick all the time. So they real l y just serve a limited purpose, but they are not benefiting society constantly, especially when you are l ooking at littl e vill ages where a lot of peopl e were taught, keep in mind the emphasis in the ol d days, preventative medicine. If I’m taught preventative medi cine, I rarely get si ck. Nowadays you might say doctors are very important, because people are not taught preventative medicine. So that is why doctors back then didn’ t really have as much of a clientele or as much of a role, so that is why they saw them as Arti sans, peopl e that com e in handy when they are needed, but most of the time they are not. And then the last one, the Merchants, are the greedy ones. They are the ones that exploit 出e l aborers and m ake money and do nothing . So th e Merchants are consid ered the worst ones among Confucian classificati on of the classes. It is also important to understand that in the Tang Dynasty they instituted civil service exams fro physicians. That means that the physici an now is also a Schol ar. You no l onger have to be third grade citi zen now . We bring you up to our level . You are now Schol ars because you have to take civil service exams. And most likely you onl y took civil service exams for physicians because you failed the civil service exam for the government. So if you can’t be a politici an, then you become a doctor. That was what happened in the Tang Dynasty. 2.
Rites of Zhou
Endemic with 出e Fang Slzis is the Zhou Li, the Ri tes of the Zhou. Zhou Li is a recording of what exactl y happened during the Z lz o u Dynasty . The Zhou Dynasty begins in the 1 1 th Century B .C.E., and includes several periods like the 25
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Warring States and the Spring and Autumn Period that we just mentioned, but when the Zl1 0 u Dynasty comes to an end, is wi th Q巾， the first uni fication of Chin a where all these feu d al states become one empire. (There are basically three unification periods in China. The Qin Dynasty is one of them . ) The first emperor of China, they refer to as Qin Slz i Huang Di. (The Zhou Li, the Ri tes of the Zhou, was found in a tomb in the Ha n Dynasty . So this is a Ha n Dynasty recording, that they foun d the Ha n Dynasty, that conti nues on into Chinese medical history as well as Chinese history in general, describing what happened during the Zhou Period .) In that wri ting we know that in the Z h o u Dynasty there were Five physi ci ans, fi ve classi fi cations. There was the Yi S h i, the physi cian teacher. There was the S h i Yi, the di eti ci an, the person who focused mostl y on diet. Again, diet was a big topic during this early part of Chinese medi cal history . The ] i Yi, whi ch was a doctor that focu sed prim ari l y on infectious di seases, epidemi cs. They are the ones that also issue the death records for people. Yang Yi w a s the doctor that focused primarily on External affli cti ons, especially derm atological conditions, skin conditions. And we also know that there were veterinarian doctors at that tim e already, Z o u Y i. A gain, these veterinari an d octors were more for the domesti cated animal s, not so much for horses . Keep in mind that horses do not become a very big part of the civilization until later on . In the Zlzou Li they al so mention that there were specialists, Slzi 氏 . Some that dealt wi th worms, so they were people that did fumigation, Zlz u . They were also specialists that deal t with toxic parasi tes, D u Gu, as well as exterminators, Qian Slz i, that actually went and exterminated i nsects, worms, beetl es, ants and al l types. So there '"'ere also these specialists that dealt with homes, but also dealt with medical conditions that might involve worms. Now what is cru cial during the Zlzou Dynasty i s that we have the creation of a concept kn own as Tia n . I talked about Heaven already as part of the mythol ogy, but we know that the actual creation of the word Heaven, Tian, begins to take pl ace in the Zlz o u Dynasty. What you see is that character that I mentioned earlier, Ren， 人 humani ty, and when humanity extends their hands out, when a human takes their hands and brings them out, they realize how big the world really is. And that is the word Da， 大 as in Da Qi, Big Qi, Great Qi. But, not onl y is the w orl d so expansive, but I real ize that there i s something that lies above m e, Slzang D i, which seems t o govern my existence . And that is the word Tia n， 天 ， that there is something above humani ty, Tia n . The w a y this word appears i s often with the Duke o f Zho u . Some o f you know that in terms of Chinese hi story, the Slla ng Dynasty, the Age of Bronze, was basically overthrown by peasant revolts. There were rebellions by the peasants and the person who conquered the Slzang Dynasty was known as King Wen, as in the Yi Jing that is associ ated with King Wen . And King Wen essentially dies after overthrowing the Shang Dynasty and he has a very young son who is now under the care of his brother, who is called the Duke of Zlz o u . So 'vhenever you hear about the Zlzou Dynasty, it is not so much about the king, it is about the Duke, the early part of the dynasty . So what they have done i s they have taken all of 26
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these Sl z a ng Dynasty prisoners and they put them in a concen廿ati on camp, a very l arge camp by the way, and what the Duke of Zhou constantly does is he goes there and he says, "You know, it was not our intenti on to try to conquer the Sh a ng people. The only reason why we did that is because we got an oracl e . ” Remember they already used the oracles. "And the oracle said that you have failed to live up to the Mandate of Heaven." This is what he is throwing out， 飞f Heaven”， Tia n . "And as a result it became our responsibility to take you over.” So he was basicall y constantl y reci ting thi s over and over again and as a result the culture bought into the idea that there was something known as Heaven, that oversees our acti vi ties, and if one fail s to achieve the Mandate in those activities, you fail in the Mand ate of Heaven, Tia n Ming, which was first used in the Zlzou Dynasty . So in the Zhou Dynasty, what you are seeing is the i dea that Heaven controls the activity that occurs in Hum anity and on Earth . So the word Heaven, Tian, in this sense, is a Zhou Dynasty invention. Furthermore, another book the Zlzou Zima n that I mentioned earlier, this chronology of the Zhou Dynasty that was believed to have been wri tten around 540 B.C.E., talks about Six Influences. It’ s in thi s text that we see words like Yin and Yang. So, Yin and Yang probably dates back to this time period of the Zhou Dynasty . We see terms like Rain and Wind, whi ch definitel y are a very popular terms in the Su Wen, and Darkness and Light. Now again, I also want to say that the Zhou Dynasty is a very hard period to date, if you are doing scholarly work, because the Zhou Dynasty had different states. Remember you had a lot of states that were fighting and each state had their own calendar. Each state had its own dates. So for hi storians a lot tim es you are going to see that the dates can be very confusing . They are not sure which date it really is, because you have all these different calendars going on during 由at period of time. What we also know during the Zlzou Dynasty is now you have King Wen’s versi on of the Book of Changes. And how can I do that? Becau se if I develop a concept of Tian and we live under Tian, now I can say that there must be a Post Heaven sequence of that Pre-Heaven concept that we associ ate wi th Fu Xi. The Book of Changes today is a Post-Heaven sequence. It is what’ s often referred to as King Wen's versi on . Remember these are th at founders of the Zhou Dynasty . So now you have the Yi Jing. And it basically speaks to you, because that is what you are doing when you are doing the Yi Jing, you are doing, like the Shamans, an oracle. You are casting these Yi Jing stalks, or you are casting these cash coins, which by the way were standardized in the Shang Dynasty already. They had currency. And, what you are doing is you are getting a yes or no answer. But what you are saying is that this yes or no answer is a way of getting a glimpse of the Mandate of Heaven. And depending on how th e coin casting turns out, you have the hexagram now 由at is tell ing you what the Mandate of Heaven is saying, . That’s the Yi Jing 由at we see being developed during the Zhou Dynasty . So you have the oracles influencing that. And, when you look at medical Yi Jing, this would be its early roots, in that context. And, if we look at the Yi Jing the concepts are not very diffi cult to understand . It’ s either a Yin or Yang ideology . 27
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The idea here is that if you look at the Yi Jing, and we 廿y to derive the Yi Jing, what you have is the notion : out of the circle came Ya ng above and Yin bel ow . So it comes first wi th binary lines: Yin and Yang . Rem ember Yin and Yang are two lines, one Yang, one Yin . So it starts out with a binary form before it
becomes a trigram . And we know that out of the Water comes that which i s Ya ng, whi ch is Wood . And out o f Fire, again, the bottom line is the beginning li ne, the leading l ine, comes that which is Yin . � y 当气 三 二 。 � 0 ⑦ ⑩
． 工＝ e c...<'l' 0t.9\c..\1C>l\'5 � /oi ' i) I \, r.. k l ＼ ，.，.，，.， ＠ Y「 .,.., ／ ＂＂叫3
一
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工 ＿！＿ （ 知们＿ ！ �
vl；；－－� 飞 v_J ｝�＜，机 剖
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E三二 飞 .Jf\飞 队;'I = =:
So there now you h ave all the fou r depictions. Ta i Yang, Shao Yang, Tai Yi11 and Slzao Yin, that \V e just talked abou t earlier. And what we know is that as thi s begins to move in cycli cal movem ent, that i t can go forward or it can go backwards. Everything occurs in the presence of its opposite. So that means that thi s Wood could be moving toward s its Ya ng, or it could be returning back tow ard its Yin . This Fire can be moving toward its El ement 出at comes after that, that which becomes Yin, or i t can go back to the El ement that it came from, which is Wood, which is Ya n g . And likewi se, Metal, because remember thi s i s h appening Post-Heaven, what is underneath Heaven, after Heaven ? Earth . So Earth is in the mi ddle. Metal can again go forward, becoming more Water, or it can deci de to go backwards 甘ying to become more Fire. And like\vi se, we see now, Water going back towards Metal or Water staying forward becom ing Wood . And now what you have out of thi s creation are t 1 e trigrams of the Yi Jing. This is what you have. That’s how the beginning of the Yi Jing developed . Yes, we could start putting it in context wi th the trigram s of the Ba Gua, but thi s is how the Yi Jing essentially ori ginated, as the basis of understanding. And what we are seeing here is that in King Wen's version, instead of having so called Heaven and Earth on top and bottom, he pl aces Fire and Water on top and bottom . So tha t’ s where he re-orientates the dynamics that we still use today. We have Fire and Water on top an d bottom . That’s the dynamics and again that depiction in the Yi Jing is a li ttle di fferent, because thi s would be the Pre-Heaven sequ ence and as we become Post-Heaven the sequences change. But thi s is that i dea of the Yi Jing in terms of the numerology idea. And we have th e d ynamics by which these El ements crea te, and the d ynamics by whi ch these El ements might come in confli ct with each other. So, I could say I have a Yin Wood. So it is depicted like this . It’s Yin because it is moving backwards. So I have a Yin Wood and the Yin Wood is being affected by . So here we have Wood and here we have Metal . So if you get this Metal hexagram, this is not a very good hexagram, because if we buy into the theory of Five Element Theory, Wood and Metal does not get al ong. What it is telling you is whatever you are doing， 飞iVood, you have to hesitate because it is Yin . It tells you, "Don’t go so quickl y . ” It’s not telling you to be Yang . What you have to watch out for is Metal . You have to watch out for people, depending on what the 28
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reading is about. These are oracles. You’re asking a questi on and what they are sayi ng i s you have to wa tch ou t for things, the kind of archetype, that’ s associ ated with Metal . Those are the things that you need to watch out for, because Metal controls Wood . So in term s of acupuncture, if one was using these early primi tive systems, you would say this is Yin Wood, which means it is Liver, and the trea怕lent that I have to exert on Liver i s Meta l . That means that I have to go to the Metal Point of Liver, LV-4, and that woul d be the Poin t that thi s �rson needs 川e treated with d时hey cast their coin toss. That w叫d be ow early form of Yi Jing develops . In other words, you throw the coins and you basically are giving your own interpretation.
h
Remember, Chinese philosophy is always like the Nei Jing, a dialogu e. You have a di alogu e. This person i s talking about something. You have a story . Confucius is always abou t stories. When you read Menciu s, these are abou t stori es of encounters wi th Confu ci u s . 飞iVhen you read Zh uang Zi, it gives you stori es. And with philosophy, the idea is that by giving you stori es, it forces you to interact with the story . It forces you to in terpret the story . And that is where all these people who vvrite Yi Jing books are giving you their in terpretation of the stories of the hexagrams. And that is what you are doing. So if you can ask the oracle, "What does that Metal mean？”， the oracle can give you a story . In fact in Chinese, when you go to get a reading, normally you get a slip of paper. Once you throw the coins, the slip of paper gives you a story, and then the person who reads the story interprets it for you . It is subjected to their interpretation . But first of all, regardless of what the interpretation is, if you pi cked a piece of paper with thi s hexagram, already on the paper, it would say that this is a bad hexagram . Bad, i t'll say, unlucky, probably not good, because you have Wood and Metal . And so from a medi cal point of view, the way that you try to harmonize thi s is that you either treat it based on the moment, or if you are following as a Confu cian Yi Jing practiti oner, you would go back to the past, because whenever you have a Control Cycl e or and Insult Cycle, the past always harmoni zes thi s . What would the past of Wood be? Water. If I pu t Water in here, Water harmonizes \iVood and Metal . Then I don’ t have to worry . As you will see when you study some of the other phil osophers, some of the philosophers say the past is the past. Who cares what they di d in the past? It is only the present moment 出at we are interested in. That woul d be like Mo Zi. Mo Zi was interested in that, as well a s the Legal ists, to some degree . But Confu cius i s always interested in going back and being exemplary . You go back to the past and find something that will be harm oni zing . So if I go back to the Water, and I go to the Water of Wood, LV-8, this whole hexagram now becomes bal anced . It is a very differen t s廿ategy . See how you can easily interpret the Yi Jing based on what ever you want. Now the questi on again, the same one that Josephine asked, which would you believe? Well again, it’s which philosophy do you believe? Whi ch story seems to be better? That's what it i s . Okay? So that d evelops during the Zhou Dynasty and thi s i s the beginning of the Book of Changes, the Yi Jing. Obviously there are a l ot of traditions that use the Yi Jing in medical practi ces, but 出is would be one aspect of that. 29
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C.
Emergence of Philosophi cal Doctrines 1.
Zi Ran, School of Naturalism
Now we are going to examine some of the philosophical doctrines that em erge during the Zhou period that are obvi ously going to have an impact on Chinese Medi cine, because to a greater degree, Chinese Medicine is appli ed Chinese phil osophy. Depending on what doctrine of Chinese philosophy you adhere to, you are going to follow a particul ar styl e, a parti cular tradition of Chinese Medicine. The Z h o u Dynasty i s often referred to as the peri od of Hundreds of Schools . Thi s is where there are definitely m any schools of thinking that occur, an d be reminded that the way that the textbooks are written, they are written with stories. They are intended to have the reader interact with the story and be able to extrapol ate from the story its particular meaning, or in some cases the insight that might come about from that, in the same way that the Yi Jing i s constru cted . And besi des the three rel igious schools, or what eventu al l y developed into reli gious teachings, w e have some major philosophical doctrines that to some degree are going to have an impact on Chinese Medicine. The first one is the one that many of you are familiar with. It’ s known as the School of Naturali sm or Zi Ran Pai, sometimes it is referred to as the Yin Yang School . So the concept of Yin and Ya ng is sai d to have ori ginated during the Spring Autumn Period . This is a period of time when the Chinese added the seasons of spring and autumn to what previously was simply seen as two seasons during the entire year, wi th gradations of hot and col d . So now they have four seasons in the Chinese calendar. The Yin Yang School or the School of Naturalism was perhaps the earliest m etaphysical school and also a school of cosmology . They are the ones that basically presented that story about Pan G u that w e mentioned earlier, that there are forces o f Chaos and that ou t o f Chaos com es Order. So again, that’ s their presentation of cosm ology, that what you have is Chaos, X u a n , and Chaos creates Order. The basic nature of life is to always seek Order, that we tum back to a state of Order. So 出at is what’ s going to happen in the human body. When you have illness, illness is a form of Chaos . It is intrinsic that the body will seek to heal i tself as it returns that chaoti c state that we call illness back to a state of Order. It is also a school of metaphysi cs in the sen se that they are the ones that describe everything as rel ative, because that’ s how we think of Yin and Ya ng, that it i s a theory of duality, but also a theory of relativi ty. The principle person who is sai d to be reflecti ve or representative of this School of N aturalism was a person named Cou Yen who lived during the Zhou period from 305-240 B.C.E. Cou Yen was the person who systematized the Five Elem ent Theory that we know of tod a y . Pri or to him there were m any permutations of the Fi ve Element Thoery . We came up with a story of how 30
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Wood creates Water. And then Water creates Fire and so forth . Cou Yen created the theory that we know of today, that Wood creates Fire, Fire creates Earth, Earth creates Metal and Metal creates 1月vater, whi ch then creates 飞t\lood . That’ s systematized by him . It is al so C o u Yen who essentially combines that Five Element Theory with the Yi11 Ya ng Theory. So you can expl ain Yin and Ya ng within the context of the Fi ve Elements . Again, we did that earlier when we talked about \t\lood and Fire as being Ya ng Elements and Metal and Water as being Yin Elements. That' s the Five Element extrapol ati on into Yin Yang Theory . He is the one who is responsible for integrating the two. Previously people that talked about Yin and Yang, talked about a separate concept, independent of Wu Xing, the Five Element Theory. It is also the School of Naturali sm that produces the idea that Yin and Yang are forces that produce and overcome each other. So th e whole idea of the Cycle of Creati on, Slzeng and Ke Cycle, and the Cycle of Control, comes from the Y i n Ya ng School . Interestingly enough, it is also the Y i n Ya ng School that basically got interested in the number of 81, the m ost Yang number. Remember the Nei Jing is 81 chapters. The Na n Jing is 81 chapters . That comes from the influence of the Zi Ran Pai. (Remember the word China i s not reall y a Chinese word . The Chinese refer to themselves as Zhong G uo, the Mi ddle Kingdom . It is
the ￥γest that invented the word China to describe the Chinese, because they think of it as the l and of the Qin Empire. Qin is the first emperor of China . It was Chin back then . Today, in Pin Y巾， they would spell it Qin . So from ”Chin”， they added the "a” and that is how the West made up the te口口 ’℃hina” . The Chinese called themselves Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom . ) Cho u Yen says that China is only 1 I 8 1 th of the entire worl d . So the worl d basi call y had 81 segments and China was just one out of the 81 of that. Again, this fascination with 81, because nine times nine, with nine being the most Yang number, will give you 8 1 . So that is important, especially if one is studying numerology, why 81 . And it is the Yin Yang School that d eveloped that idea . It is also the Yin Yang School that tried to integrate the concepts of the Yi Jing. Remember the diagram of the Yi Jing and the wording that we talked about. Thunder and Rain, Heaven and Earth, Fire and Water, those from the Yin Yang School are the ones that come up with that type of j argon to describe the Yi Jing. Basically, they s a y that Heaven and Earth i s sti m u l a ted by Thu nder and Lightening . It is enri ched by Rain and Wind . And that allows the Sun and the Moon to evolve to promote the hot and col d seasons. Remember they are developing at a tim e \vhen there was still the inclination is to think of the world in two seasons, hot and col d seasons, whi ch formulates into the lakes of th e worl d . So again, all of the elements of the Yi Jing are in those kinds of sayings . And that comes from the Yin Yang School . They are the m aj or adherents of Yu the Great, because Yu conquered the flood and since Water is what Chaos develops into. Remember Chaos develops into 飞叩ater. Water devel ops into the two principles of Yin and Yang . And since they are interested in Yu, they are interested in 1月vater and they are interested in the idea of Chaos . They talk about Yu the Great as being the originator of Nine 31
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Palaces, the Nine Categories . Again, we talked about those N ine Palaces . But unlike the earlier understanding where we put under the Palace the idea of Yin and Yang in terms of morphology, they put under each of the Palaces what they refer to as the Nine Categori e s . They were starting to devel op a system of correspondences. The first category for example is Wu Xing, the Five Elements . That’s the first category and each one of these things has coηespondences. They say Wood has the ability of being straight and at the same time being crooked . They came out with that. And they are the ones that gave Wood the Sour taste . So it’s not the Nei Jing . The Yin Yang School gave that particular identity to Wood . They say that Water has the ability of Moistening and Descending, and that Water is Salty. They say 出at Fire burns and Fire can also Ascend. They give Fire the Bi忧er taste. They talked abou t Metal as being yielding and that Metal, can be shaped into anything that you want, that Metal can be modified. Of course they gave Metal the Spicy, acri d or Pungent taste. For Earth, they say Earth is Sweet and Earth is where you toi l . Earth has the ability of giving you the Ripening and Rotting aspect that we associ ate wi th Earth . That’ s one category, that’ s called the First category that they associate with Yu the Great. They are also responsible for another category that they refer to as the Fi ve Activities. The Five Activities are essenti all y : how one looks, appearance, how one sounds, hearing, how one talks, speech, how one thinks, and the things that a person sees . So som e of the Elements that we can think of that go into diagnosi s, that we eventual l y use in Chinese Medicine, comes from the Yin Yang School . He says that appearance should be one that eventually gives one a sense of respect. It is the way you look that should emanate a certain amount of order. Respectfulness is the way it som etimes is translated . When you speak, one who is healthy, speaks wi th reason. They have rational thoughts in their speech, and \vhen one thi n ks, on e shou l d thi nk wi th depth, th a t there is a certain profoundness in one’ s thinking . When one l ooks, one shoul d look with cl ari ty, and \·vhen one hears, one shou l d hear with di stinction. Again, giving qu ali ties that are associated again with five, and these are called the Five Activities. So basically they go through all of these for the Five Element Theory, and some of these become the correspondences that we use today in the Five Element Theory . That’ s the Yin Ya ng School, arguably the m ost infl u enti al school in terms of Chinese Medi cin e . Y i n an d Ya n g Theory, th e Fi ve El em ent Theory, the correspondences to the human body begin to be influenced from the School of Naturalism . 2.
Fa Jia 法
The Legalists
The second and perhaps the most dominant school of the latter part of the
Zhou Dynasty, whi ch all ows for the first emperor of China to exi st, is the Legalist School . Fa ]ia is the name of the Legalist School . There is no Legalist in existence
today, at l east that I know of. It is considered the most radical of Chi nese philosophi cal doctrines . They were antagoni stic to almost all of the other philosophies that exi sted . The basic premise of the Legalist is that all of us are 32
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born bad . Everyone i s born bad and the only way to keep order is that you have to have power. Ju st imagine how Qin Slzi Huang Di comes into power. He has to demonstrate that he could get power to conquer all of these other states and unify China into one state . Basically the Legalist rejects moral standards. That m eans rejecting Confu cianism . They very often make fun of Confuci ans, saying that Confucius always talks about Yao and Shun as being exempl ary . They say, ’ How does he really knmv that they were exemplary? Was he really there? He wasn’t there. He is only m aking 吐tis up.” So they were one of the first schools to challenge the Confuci an notion that there were people that were m odel ci tizens that we could foll m·v after. They are the ones that basically say that we should l ook i nto the present rather than the past. They say that there should be no authority except the ruler, and 出at 也e king should be the one that has authority, and how the king gets authority is through reward and punishment. You punish any wrong doings a n d you rew ard those who basically listen to you . Appeasement i s not an option according to Legalists . They seek politi cal control and pmver and th ey say tha t you have to demonstrate accompli shments by dem onstrating results . Everything you do should have to have resul ts . So they were very i nfluential for someone who is power hungry and defi nitely that’s where you are going to see Q巾， the first emperor to unify China. Essentially, there are two philosophers that are reflective of the Legali sts .
Slzang Yang, lived from 390-338 B . C . E . Again, another book might gi ve you a different date. I tol d you already that the Zho u Dynasty had a very h ard time with dating . Han Fei Zi is perhaps the most famou s of the Legalists. He lived
from 280-233 B.C.E. He was a prince of one of the Warring States, the prince of the Han State. He was the one who offered his services to the king of the Qin state who eventually unifies China. Han Fei Zi b asi cally lived an abu sed life. He had very abusive parents, and you can see the famil y background where he was coming from, where he was always belittled. So he sought power. In fact, he commi tted suicide at the end of hi s life . So he defini tel y must have been very tormented by his upbringing .
But in any case, Han Fei Zi offers his servi ces as a philosopher to the King of Q巾， basi call y demanding that the King of Qin punish anyone that does not adhere to his power, and reward those who essenti all y listen and accompli sh \vhat he wants . He bel i eved that by promoting yourself as a very powerful person, it would actu al l y scare people so peopl e wou l d not be viol ent. He believes that awe inspiring power prohibits violence . People won't go to fight against you if they are afraid of you . That’ s one of their basic premises. He says tha t virtue is insuffi ci ent to end di sorder. If someone is virtuous, that still doesn't stop a fight. The fi ght will still go on . The only way to stop a fight is 出at they have to be afrai d of you . So he says you have these Confu ci an schol ars talking about virtuous deeds and all that, so people can model after them by demons甘ating th at if you could be a Jun Zi, a gentleman, people will begin to respect you . Ha1 1 Fei Zi disagrees with that. He says the only way that 出ey will respect you is if they are afraid of you . So fear i s what they are trying to provoke . And he says that we should depend on the people not doing good for the state, but rather depend on people not doing anything wrong for the state. 33
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So i t’ s really watching out, not for . . . they do good things, that' s fine, we just don’t want to have to pay attention to them . The ones that are doing things wrong, those are the ones we have to pay attention to. Those are the ones we have to punish so we keep everything in order. While it sounds like their type of philosophy is one probably most of us would not want to adhere to, there are some aspects about the Legalists that nevertheless are important to the history of philosophy. It is due to the Legalists, who essentially say that i f one is skillful and talented, we should encourage that, because skill and talent brings accomplishments and results. So they are really saying that for anyone who i s talented, you really need to nurture that and, of course they would say, you need to reward that. They are also the ones that actu ally downplay Daois m, becau se Daois t philosophy is very much found in the Legalist strategy, becau se the Legalist talks about 队！u 队fei, no acti on, non-acti on. The Legalist would say there i s no need for government acti on i f the law is working effectively. So they are saying that we could be like the Daois 旬， but the cruci al part of being an effective Daois t is that you have to have laws that work, so everyone obeys the law and you don’ t have to have puni shment then . So that' s to them what is Wu Wei. So they borrow from the Daois t ideas and they actually write in the Daois t tone. Of cou rse Daois ts would often reject that type of in terpretation, but nevertheless this is used to say that Dao is ts are a part of Legalist philosophy . And because they are interested in ge忧ing results, thi s is consi dered pretty enticing for some philosophers . So that’ s the Legalist. The Legal i s t defini tel y gains control as a philosophy with the first emperor of China. It was 出e Legalist that was responsible for burning the books in 2 1 3 B .C.E. and killing 460 scholars at that time. Of course the books they did not bu rn were the thi ngs that include Divination Qin Shi Hu a n g Di was very much interested in lmmortality, so he was interested in Divination . They did not burn medi cal books. So we still have the books of medi cine and agri cul ture, because you need agri cul ture . But everything el se, especi al l y Confucian \vri tings, Daois t writings, were all burned. All the philosophies were burned . So they w ere responsible for burning m aj or books . Some people say that we probably don’ t have everything from the Yellow Emperor, who is associ ated with writing four books , but the onl y book that we know survived is the Nei Jing. They believe it is because they burned all the other textbooks that belonged to the Yellow Emperor. So that’ s the second philosophical school tha t was around during the Zhou Dynasty . 3.
Mo Zi (468 - 376 B.C.E.) Universal Love
Mo Zi was probabl y not hi s real name. Mo Zi means ink or tattoo. So most likely Mo Zi must have been a slave or something . Most of hi s followers would usually belong to a slave group. It was common that you branded your slaves in China . So Mo Zi, that te口到 was probably in relationship to the fact that he had some type of tattoo. Mo Zi was actually very prominent, and highly competi tive with Confu cius. In fact, frequentl y in Confucius' book, Mo Zi was probabl y in the back of hi s mind, and at least followers of Confucius were 34
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thi nking abou t Mo Zi and trying to create the counter argument. One of the things that i s associated with Mo Zi is universal love, unconditional l ove . Love everyone like you would love yourself, which of course is already antagonistic to Confu ci ani sm, because in Confu ci ani sm there is a distinction about whom you l ove. You love your family first. You all know that there is a sense that you can say that you are compassionate. I ’ m qui te sure th at you woul d be m ore compassionate, at least the majority of you, would be more compassionate with your mother than someone you don’t know down the street. But wi th Mo Zi, you shou l d be equally compassionate with someone that i s down the street as you woul d be compassi onate with your mother. That there shou l d be no distinction in the amount of love that you generate. And they say that by doing that, not only do you have distincti ons and benefits, but you have benefi ts that are no longer having any di stinction, because if I love everyone else the way that they woul d love me back, then everyone benefits in equilibrium, and not， “You treat that person a little better than you 甘eat me.” There is none of that jealousy . So Mo Zi was considered the doctrine of universal love. That’s one of the first and most important doctrines, which again, really got on 出e nerves of Confucian practi tioners .
Mo Zi a l so talks about the Sage Kings. So l ike Confucius, there i s agreement that there i s the Sage Kin g . But Confucius looked a t the Sage Kings, that is the King Yao and Sh u n that we mentioned, in the sense that they were exemplary . They were individuals tha t we want to model after. They were the people that we want to study from. That’s why Confucius is noted for education, in particul ar, studying the Classics, stu dying the past. Mo Zi on the other hand says， ”No, that’ s wrong. These Sage Kings basicall y became Sage Kings because they loved the people . They honored Heaven, but they loved the peopl e and they served their own spiri tual wel l being by benefiting the peopl e.” It’s more of a social welfare type of mentality that Mo Zi has. Mo Zi was strongly against Ming . He did not believe in Destiny. He does not believe in this i dea that we see with Confu cianism as well as with Daois m . He did not believe that things are set u p and that you have no control over it. They say be practi cal, be pragmatic. If there i s something you see that you don’t like, you have the ability to change it. You don’ t have to say， ”Oh I accept. I just resign mysel f 出at 出i s is going to happen to me. ” They are saying that basicall y, a person who is poor lives in a poor worl d . We all know that saying. A happy person lives in a happy worl d . A poor person li ves in a poor worl d . \,Yell, you are poor because you allow yourself to be oor. Unless you change i t, the worl d i s not going to change. So Mo Zi was hi g hl y into getting this pragmati c aspect and going against the idea of destiny . So Mo Zi, we are going to see, woul d be i nfluenti al for practi ti oners who beli eve that you can change the Consti tuti on . Because that is what he is saying. I can change the Consti tution. I don ’ t have to live thi s type of life. I don’t have to give credibility to what I’ve been born with . I can change it. But again, as w e see, his theory i s not going to receive the favor of the Imperi al nobility . As a result, there is the belief that is going to overcome his belief, that there is such a thing as Ming, and consequently, we don’t find the u se of the Eight Extra Channel s . You cannot ch ange Destiny, so don ’ t try to 35
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change Constitutional Vessels. There is no such thing as Constitutional therapy. You can’t change it. Just accept it and, at best， 甘y to understand what you can benefit from it, not benefit from changing it. That’ s part of the Confucian ideas, learning to live with the circumstances that you are in and tryi ng to understand \v h a t t h o s e ci r cu m s t a n c e s a r e . So t h a t ’ s Mo Z i， ” C h a n g e i t . ” Are there any questions about these three individuals? Again, they play maj or roles in Chinese Medi cine, because they are going to have an impact, an infl u ence . In other words, for the Legalists, their s甘ategy then is power-seeking, and there are a number of Legalist practitioners. To them, your illness is because you have lost your ability to have power. And where does that power come from ? Yu a n Q i . So the onl y w ay to strengthen your ability to get ri d of the i llness is that you have to strengthen Yuan Qi. Again, that’ s the debate. Can they real l y work wi th Yua n Q i. The Legali sts say th at you can, that you could strengthen the Yua n Q i . Mo Zi i s also saying the same thing. So that’ s where there is some agreement. It is only going to be the Confucians that say that you cannot. So thi s is where the difference lies. Question: You sai d that in the Legalist School, they didn’t depend on people doing good for the state, j u st not doing bad to the state. Doesn't Confucius say that the important thing i s that I not do to others wha t I woul dn’t want to happen to me? Answer: Right, that’ s the doctrine of the Mean. Question : So is he adopti口g the same negative criterion? Answer: Not necessarily is that adopting a negative criteri on . What Confu cius is real ly saying is that you have to first look at another person and consider what you woul d want them to do to you . So that you reall y are looking at them first before you look at yoursel f, whereas the Golden Mean here would be, "Do to others what you would do for yourself.” So you first have to look at yourself and say, "Oh thi s is what I would do for myself. Now I can do this for others.” So Confucius is really saying， ”Don’t look at yourself first. Look at others first and ask yourself what you would want to do to them, because you don’ t want that done to you . ” So you really are l ooking at them . So he' s really trying to get you to look at them before you look at yourself. Whereas wi th the Legalists, what they are saying is 出at you just have to watch everyone and make sure they are not doing anything wrong. So i t’s not even about the good stuff. You are j u s t watching out for all the bad things that they are doing. It’s a littl e different in that context. D.
San Jia The Three Religions 1.
Daoism
Those are philosophies. I just grouped them under San ]ia, because that’s the way that they are often referred to, as the Three Religions, because these are 36
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the philosophies that eventually became insti tutions. So they become organized instituti ons, whi ch generally means that they become religions. And of course, some people would not consi der Confu ci anism a religion, bu t it nevertheless is an insti tution . Most phil osophies are not necessarily institutions . What you have here now i s the Three Religions, San J臼. And, first among these is Daois m . The key focus that came ou t of Daois t literature is Yang Sheng 善生 , to nourish li fe, which by the time you get into the Song Dynasty, it Wei as in Wei Qi, to preserve life. So in the Song became Wei Sheng 棒了 生 Dynasty, the wording becomes a li ttle different. Ya ng Sl1e11g is associ ated with the writi ngs of Yang Zh u �着 朱 . Yang Zh u was basically the individual who says that the most precious thing in li fe, is life i tself. And that one shoul d devote all of hi s / her attenti on to preserving, nurturing, and maintaining the vitality of that life, by which he means physical life. It is hi s statement that gave bi rth to people being hermits. One of the best ways of being able to take care of your own life, is not to have any distractions of someone bothering your life. So a lot of people became very reclusive. They go into mountains that are high. They l ive in the mountains and they basically live a very isolated life where they are tryi ng to nurture their life . That’ s Ya ng Z h u . This is very common in Daois t li terature . That is why sometimes peopl e would say Ya ng Z h u i s one of the primary originators of Daoist thinking, rather than Lao Zi. So Ya ng Zlz u has this concept of nouri shing l i fe. We know that that’ s definitely a predominant focus of Chi nese Medi cine in this peri od of tim e . Remember, what is the basic understandi ng? You take herbs, you eat food and that the upper herbs, the higher grade herbs are the ones that preserves life, the same word, Ya ng Sheng. So again, the basic premise is preventative medicine. Dao is m was focusing on how can I nurture my life? And one of the key things that they’ve talked abou t in addition to diet is Qi Go ng, which in the ol d days was cal led Dao Y巾， doing these types of movements that wil l i nsure vi tali ty coursing through the body. And they talked abou t Moxibustion, since the focu s in the ancient ti mes is Yang Qi, by appl ying warmth, fire, to my body, I can keep the Yang Qi in a constant state of Tonificati on : Moxibustion. \'\Then we get into acupuncture, you will see tha t the earl i est textbooks on acu pu ncture are textbooks on Moxibustion . There’ s no mention of the word Zlze11 , needle, acupuncture. It is ahvays Jiu, Moxibustion. Some of the earliest textbooks that we found in acupuncture are textbooks on Moxibustion. And you wi ll see that my su ggesti on i s th a t from Moxibusti on came Bl oodl etti ng, and from Bloodletting came acupuncture in terms of Needling . Again there is hi stori cal data to support 由 at argument. In any case, Daois m is also what gives birth to the School of Naturalism . The School of Naturalism i s often seen as an outgrowth of the School of Daois m, even though sometimes Daoism will not like to claim that, because there are other aspects of Dao is m that we don’ t see in common with the Zi Ran School . The commonality is that they do have the theory of cosmology, how things ori ginate, and like the Zi Ran School, it is focused on this idea of from Chaos comes Order. The Daois t also talks about 廿ying to j u st dupli cate nature and be spontaneous, 37
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not to have counter-fl ow, Ni Qi i单 氛 , a term that we see a lot in the S u Wen, that disease is a resul t of counter-fl ow, Ni Qi. We also know that in the Spring Autumn Annals of the Lu family, the Lu Shi Cun Q巾， already, statements such as: “ Running water does not stagnate”， ”Door hinges do not get become w orm eaten＇’， and ” If physical form does not move, the Jing Essence does not flow, and Qi will stagnate” . Remember, these are statements that we see in the Nei Jing . There are books that date back earlier than the Nei Jing that already have similar statements. The Hua i Na n Z i 淮 南 子 , another textbook, also h a s these statements. And the Spring Autumn Annals of the L u family is an important textbook becau se in there, we find not only medical claims, but also astrologi cal claims. For example, in that book, they say that in the summer of the Jia Xin day, of the 14th month, which hi storians have dated back to March 1 1 th, 594 B.C.E., they say that the sun \vas eclipsed . So this was one of the earliest astronomical observations that has been recorded in the history of astronomy. And it is made in the Spring Autumn Annals, where we see one of the first records of an eclipse of the sun. Again, the Spring Autumn Annals is often seen as a textbook that is very Daois t orientated . It is a chronology of events, but the flavor that it tries to suggest, outsi de of the observations, is trying to be spontaneou s, not to m ove against the flow, not to have Rebellious Qi. So Daoism emphasizes cosmology . It emphasizes non-infringement. This is obviously where it is going to differ, and becom e in some ways antagonistic with Confuci ani sm . Confucianism, remember, i s abou t hum ani ty . It’ s humanism . It’ s trying to do som ething to better the fami l y, which will then better the state . In Confuci anism, they believe that ethi cs begins in the famil y . By you observing how your brothers, your siblings, interact, by you observing how your parents interact with each other, you bring that to soci ety . And if you have harmonious interacti ons in you r family, it means you are learning good ethics, whi ch you bring to soci ety . That’ s why Con fuci u s focused on the famil y, whereas Daois nz focused more on nature. They focus more on the i dea of observing nature and not interfering . So again, this is going to come up in terms of medical ethics. At what point does hea ling become an i nfringement, and no longer seen as the natural course of Order. Remember, what is the basic premise? That out of Chaos, disease, comes Order. Daoists already believe that intrinsic in the human body, is that when you are ill, the body will try to heal itself, and that if it doesn't want to heal, then that might be the natural course of events and then infringing may be going against the natural Order. So this is going to be an issue that is going to be medically considered an ethical question that is going to be debated among Daois t and Confucian practitioners . We will look at that debate tomorrow when we get into som e of the practitioners that are Daois t and Confu ci an and also some who are Buddhist. The Daois ts also believed in self-cultivation. A lot of the techniques that they talked abou t at thi s point included medi tation and visualization . They believed that you need to get to really understand more of how to become more sociable wi th y oursel f, rather than w i th others. Rem ember, Confuciani sm 38
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focu sed on thi s key word, L i， 阳tu a l . To them, rituals were the trappings of soci alization . A l ot of times when you become socialized, you tend to put too much effort into being appropriate, being righteous, to use Mencius' word, and that these efforts are all external and all superfi ci al and i t mi ght take you away from your intrinsi c nature . Of course, Daois m offered other rol e models that woul d not be typi cal of Confuciani sm . They offer: watch a drunk, and see how natural a drunk is. Be like a drunk rather than be like a schol ar. So they are in many ways opposing, and that we see with writings like Zhuang Zi. Zhuang Zi is probably the one that i s most verbal with Confuciani sm . He even gi ves the story of how Confu cius meets Lao Zi and Confucius then makes the remark that today he saw a dragon. But that comes from Zhuang Zi, so obviously he’ s trying to, in ·some ways. say that Lao Zi was even greater than Confu ciu s himself. Question : Both the School of Naturali sm people and the School of Naturali sm and Dao is t s talk abou t Chaos . l was j u st w ondering at what point, i f I understand i t ri ght, from the Dao is t point of vi ew, Chaos becomes l i ke the highest level of the spiri t, something that is actually sought, where that sounds quite contrary to the School of Naturalism . Answer: Yeah, the di fference here is that Daois m basically states that if we w ant to l ook at the cycli cal process, Chaos creates Order, and Order, by its own end, creates Chaos. And Chaos means you have all possibilities, because out of Chaos com es all possibi l i ti e s . So to the Dao is ts, you w ant to return back to Chaos because out of th at comes the source of all things, all possibili ties, ,,vhi ch they al so equate with being 1月＞／ ater, being the source of all things. Whereas the School of Naturalism, their intention is that you want to keep Order going because the natural state of things is not to return back to Chaos, but just to constan tly maintain Order. So that’ s where, again, there is a divergence between the two schools . Question : Did Daois m have that understanding of Chaos more o r less from the very beginning? Answer: As a philosophy, yes, because that’ s p art of Lao Zi' s thi nking, that Chaos . . . that’ s part of the whole idea of non-infringement, that you acknovvl edge that Chaos, too, i s part of the Order of things. And of course, with Dao is m, we al so know that they focu s a lot on the study of alchemy, Dan， 丹 . Ge Hong was prob ably the most famous of the al chemists. And here, with al chemy, what we are l ooking at is the idea that, it started with Ya ng Zh u, that there are methods and techniques that one can engage in to continue to preserve the physical body well into ol d age and to some degree, to the level of immortali ty . So the Daois ts were one of the first schools to co叫ure up the notion of immortali ty . And I don’t mean immortality in terms of the soul lives on, but physi cal immortali ty . And 出ey devised ways of trying to tap into that through the study of Dan Shu, alchemi cal practi ces .
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Hi stori ans beli eve that alchem y traveled to Persi a in 700 A.CE., because during that period of time, the Chinese were begi nning an expansion of their empire . Even pri or to that during the early part of the Ha n Dynasty, which is called the Western Ha n Dynasty, China was already expanding . China was going up north . They were having military campaigns against Korea. They were going south . They had taken over areas that we would call today, Vietnam . They had gone all the way into Central Asia at that time. So there is a lot of expansion already during the Han Dynasty, whi ch came to an abrupt end with the Eastern Han, because at that time there w as a l ot of drought. There was a lot of famine, so all the peasants w ere starting to revolt. During the Eastern Ha n, this is when the Ha n Dynasty begins to go into a low point. But in the Western Han, there \Vas a lot of expansion taking place in China. So what you see i s that by the tim e you get into the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese are now beginning to expand into Persi a, p arts of Persia. 飞'Ve see that defini tely taking place during the Jin Yua n Period, with Genghis Khan and of course Kubl a Khan in China where they had gone all the way to Turkey and conquered all of these places. But hi storians believe that alchemy traveled from China to Persia in 700 A.CE. and then to the Byzantines in 1 000 A.CE. and then eventually it did influence P aracelsu s at the end of the 1 5th Century . So, if you l ook at the wri tings, for example on pulse taking, that you see in the Persi an texts, they are very si milar to Wang Shu He ’s pul se taking. And of course， 队lang S h u He' s pulse taking dates back to the 4th Century, while the Persian or the Arab dates back to the Ta n g Dynasty peri od, the 7th Century . So thi s is where we see the influences from, at least in term s of medicine, how pulse taking goes and influences other countries. Alchemy, again, i s abou t physical alchemy, but there i s al so "external” alchemy. One of the best representatives of alchemy i s going to be Ge Ho ng . And we will look a little bi t into his life and see his influence in terms of acupun cture. Because out of alchemy comes the notion that you have al chemi cal acupuncture. It is alchemy that begins the process of understanding minerals, because it was also ”external ” alchemy . Gold and silver, so what you are looking at, remember, is the idea of trying to get out of lead, gol d . The idea is that gold was precious, and si lver was the process by whi ch the sublimation, the distill ation, begins to take pl ace. So when you start looking at gold and silver Needles, they were not really just u sed for acupuncture. In p arti cul ar, they were used for al chemical acupuncture . That i s, by u sing the silver Needles you get certain firing times to take place, whi ch i s very crucial to alchemists. That if the temperature i s not ri ght you cannot get the extractions, you can’ t get the sublimation. So the use of silver Needles was to try to fire up the body temperature to be j ust right so that when the gold needle goes in, you get the alchemi cal elixir that is associated with longevity . So gol d and silver Needles, con廿ary to what some of you might think was used for Di spersal and Tonification, was not used in acupuncture primarily for 廿eating disease, but rather primaril y for alchemi cal w ork, or the redemption of Spirit from matter. That w as the use of gold and silver Needles. In fact we often see it where the first set of gold and silver Needles was found with a prince that lived during the Ha n Dynasty and that prince was very much interested in 40
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alchemy, ju st like Qin S h i Huang Di was very interested in alchem y . Gol d and silver Needles were usually assoιiated with alchemy. Most people, remember, couldn’t afford gol d and silver Needles anyway, at least the gol d Needles . And the reason why we don’ t have a lot of those copies left is because in China, metal was always an ongoing commodity . So it means if I don’t have any money, I would mel t my gold Needles and use i t for something else. That’ s what they were constantly doing with metal s in China . There i s al so the movement of the Huang Lao School during the H a n Dynasty . Again you see that term being mentioned in the legend of Pan G u , that in the beginning, there were the Five Ancients. And the first Ancient was the Yell ow Anci ent, Huang Lao. So that is associated with Pan Gu’s myth, but this i s also a period of time when they believe, especially during the Eastern Han, the latter part of the Ha n Dynasty, when again the peasants were revol ti ng, and as they revolted, they believed that they were going to get a Messiah, the Second Coming . Since Dao is m was the popul ar phil osophy of that tim e, th e Second Coming was going to take on the role of Lao Zi. And Lao Zi is going to appease the Confucians, was going to be like the Yellow Emperor, an exemplary emperor who will bring harmony back to the worl d . So these peasants were organizing a lot of revolu ti ons throu ghout China and thi s i s what’ s referred to as the Huang Lao Movement, which eventually devel ops into religious Daois m, where one of the Daois t evangeli sts named Zhang Dao Ling, eventually creates the Celesti al Master School . This i s taking pl ace, and again, what i s important here i s the i dea that you could have the presence of an Immortal coming back into this world . Remember, the whole idea of al chemy leads to i mmortali ty, but thi s immortality can also come back to the worl d and save us. So you can see where religion comes in now. Previ ous to that, we don’t reall y have religion. We have ancestral worship and we have worshipping the Earth God . But now, you could worship anyone you want, because now there is the notion that they could be Immortals and they coul d com e back and help u s . So now Confucius becomes canonized, Lao Zi becomes canonized . You have now organi zed religion beginning to take place, whi ch prior to the Han was not really seen . We have Shang Di, the Lord on the High, but again, he looks over the Three Heavens. He' s not looking over earth. He is looking over the 33 Heavens. So now you h ave the i dea that you can have celesti al intervention, which again, is important, because if that’ s the case, I can now write a book on Chinese Medicine, where I dreamt that a cel estial being came into my dream and they tol d me that these formulas are going to benefit humani ty. And you have a number of books that have those types of names by celestial beings, such as Lao Zi. W e know that there was a book associ ated with Lao Zi in medicine during the Ha n Dynasty that has been lost. Some people beli eve thi s was probably m ade up, because of the trend that was going on. N ow in Daois m we know that the key textbooks are Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Lie Z i and Huai Nan Zi. These are the principl e Daois t writers during thi s Zhou Dynasty period into the Han Dynasty . Lao Zi, whom most of you are probably familiar with, was interested in cosmology. ”In the beginning there was the Dao,
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and the Dao gave birth to the One, and the One gave birth to the Two." That’ S Yin and Yai毯， and the Yin and Yang gave birth to the myriad of all things. That’s typical Daoism 101 . And Lao Zi was probably uncomfortable wi th another school, that I didn’ t mention, that is often referred to as the Logician School . During the Zlzou Dynasty, there was a school that was really into giving everything a name, a category . What is thi s ? Let’ s really try to analyze this and give it a name, almost like Ari stoteli an phil osophy . And Lao Zi was very uncomfortabl e with n ami ng something. That’ s why "the name that can be told i s not the eternal n am e . ” So obviou sly, whoever is writing the Dao De Jing \Vas trying to also go against the philosophy of naming things, categorizing, which by itsel f seems contradictory to Five Element Theory already, because Five Element Theory is a categorizing strategy . And, notice, when you read the Dao De Jing , there is no mention of Five Elemen t Theory whatsoever. They don’ t want to categorize. As soon as you start saying, "This i s 飞i\Tood ” ， then you are starti n g to cause something ( ? ) . So this is where, again, the Five Element Theory of the School of Naturali sm i s d efini tel y not part of Daois t theory . Yin and Ya ng, yes to some degree, bu t definitely not Five El ement.
Zhuang Zi, as I said, was the person who took Daois m to i ts extreme. He was 出e person who always questioned, in parti αlar, reali ty . What is reality? Is reality that which you see? And how do you know that what you are seeing, and the person that is seeing, is real ity? So it is almost like begging the questi on over and over again. Lie Zi was like Zhuang Zi. He was a skeptic. Everything was written in skeptici sm . And Huai Nan Zi, whi ch i s the name of a pl ace called Huai Nan, which is one of the states . The state was run by a person named Liu An. Liu An
was the king and he had a l ot of phil osophers working under him and the compilation of their work became known as Huai Nan Zi. And Huai Nan Zi, also like Ha n Fei Zi, committed suici d e . I n any case, Huai Nan Zi i s the one that Daois m as well as Chinese Medicine will probably get the most resources from, because they talk about that the Mi crocosm is a reflection of the Macrocosm, that the human body is l i ke the worl d . They are the ones that tal k about the separation of the Heavy from the Light, the Pure from the Impure, a term that we use a lot in Chinese Medicine . They are the ones that talk a lot about that the nature of the Dao is understanding the interaction between Heaven and Earth . Again, something that we see a lot in Chinese Medical literature. From Zhuang Zi comes the term Liu He, Six H armony, the Six Union. Liu He i s the confl uences of time and space. When you talk about the Six Confluent
Points of the Divergent Channel s, that' s the term that they u s e . Time is represented usually by the neck and space is represented by the pelvis. So Six Harmony is the union between Heaven, the Windows to the Sky Points opens us up to Heaven, and these Points on the pelvis opens us up to the Earth. So time and space basically is reflective of Heaven and E arth. So that’ s Zhuang Zi who begins to expl ore this concept of how time and space are constantly interacting, which he calls the Six Unions. 42
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2.
Confuciani sm
Confucius comes a little after Lao Zi. We know that he was born probably around 551 or 552 B.C.E. Again, the exact dating of Confu cius is not accurate . A n d we know that he l i v e d t o an age of 73 years ol d based o n his students writings. So he probably died around 478 B . C . E . Confuci anism is really not that popul ar until the end of the Tang Dynasty . We know that it becomes extremely popular in the Song Dynasty . In our next weekend together, we are going to be looking at a lot of Confucian theory in Chinese Medicine. Right now we are j ust getti n g a general overview of the th eori es and then as we talk abou t the devel opment of the medi ci ne, you’H see how some of these theori es com e into play . The principle thinking of Confu cius i s to return back to the past, study the Classi cs, read the books of the past. Educati on is the most important aspect. And in parti cular, read the books of peopl e that you can model after. Look for role model s . Look for exemplary individuals, what they refer to as Jun Zi, the gentleman . And in Confuciani sm, one of the key textbooks of Confuci ani sm is Li Ji; Li, that is Respect or Ritual Rites, and Ji, that is The Records of the Ri tes. It mentions the importance of ancestry, even in the practice of medicine. In fact in Confuciani sm, i t says， “Do not take medicine from a clini cian who has not been from a family of physicians for three generati ons . ” Because if their grandfather didn’t do i t, their father didn’ t do it, most likely they don’t have as much clinical experience . And again, remember in the old d ays, it was apprenti ceshi p . So if this i s your first time ou t, you kind of do not have a lot of clinical history behind you, whereas three generati ons have a l ot. They saw the things that were effectiv e, the thi ngs that were ineffectiv e . So there was a l ot more clinical background . So Confucius or the Record of Rites mentions this. Confuciani sm is focused primaril y on Xiao， 孝 filial piety . So again, it’s a duty to study medicine, to hel p heal your fam i l y . They also talk about the influence of meri t over ancestry . It is because of the influence of Confuciani sm 出at we have the end of feudal ranks. That means that you don’t give posi ti ons to someone because they are famil y m embers . You give positions to someone because they deserved it through their merits. Because of Confuci anism, a civil service began to develop, especially after the Qin D ynasty with the beginning of Han Dynasty, the 3rd Century B.C.E. Some i nfluenti al wri ters of Confuci ani sm includes Mencius, S u n Zi, (not to be confused with the Art of W ar; that’ s another Sun Zi), and Dong Zhong Shu, another infl uenti al fi gure of Confucian doctrine. Mencius is considered the ideal Confuci anist, whereas Sun Zi is considered more of the pragm atic Confuci anist. That means, you know, follow Confucian theory, but you have to be pragmati c about i t, too . I n other words, yes, you want to foll ow someone who i s exempl ary, b u t you also have t o understand that even someone who i s exemplary probably has his / her bad things too. You have to b e practical about that. No one is really entirely good. That is what he is saying. Whereas Mencius 43
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believed 由at there are people v.rho are entirely good， 出at 吐1ey have nothing that is wrong with them . So there is that difference between the two. And again, i t’s more of an adj ustment, that i s, to convince someone that you could be pseudo Confuci ani st, that would be more pragmatic. Dong Zhong Sim ( 1 79 - 1 04 B.C.E.) focused more on really taking the pragmati c aspect of Confucianism and really trying to expand that. That means, yes, establish schools to teach people the theori es and so then they begin to influence the greater culture. It is due to his infl u ence that w e have the d evelopm ent of an Imperi a l Uni versity, the development of universi ties that teach people the doctrines of Confucianism . 3.
Buddhism
Then we have the l ast of the p hi l osophies or reli gions, Bu ddhi sm . Bud dhi sm, when i t came to China was often seen as just a reincarnated Lao Zi. That was the earl y way that they a cknowledged Bu ddhism, that i t’ s just Lao Zi reincarnated . Buddhism, when it came to China, became transformed . There are many schools of Buddhism, just as there are many schools of Daoism, just as there are m any schools of Confuciani sm. Buddhism, in terms of the medical hi story, i s very important because i t’ s due to Bu d dhism that you have the d evelopment o f hospital s, hospices and orphanages . Thi s is because it i s the idea of reli eving suffering for the m asses . That is not to deny that the first hospital in China was developed already in the Han Dynasty, pri or to the influence of Buddhism. But, with Buddhism, you have a lot more hospitals developing in China . (Actually a lot of that declined by the Qing Dynasty . So by the time foreign countries came into China, they were kind of amazed why China did not really have m any hospitals . It is because by the Qing D ynasty, hospitals were no l onger under the control of the government. Hospi tal s became a private enti ti es, under pri vate ownership . So they did not have the support of the government and as a result a lot of hospitals cl osed down by the Qing Dynasty . ) If you were t o visit China, i f y o u di d tim e travel and you went back during the time when Buddhi sm is at i ts height, which is in the Tang Dynasty, you would see that there w ere a lot of hospital s under the patronage of the Imperi al courts. In fact, becau se the Tang D ynasty, whi ch is in the 7th Century A . C E ., i s often seen as the height of B u d dhism in China, this is when Zen Buddhism developed in China . Zen Buddhi sm or Cha n Buddhi sm in China d eveloped during the Ta n g Dynasty . Ag ain, the Chinese were exposed to Buddhism by the ti me you get into the 3rd and 4th Century A . C E ., but Buddhi sm reaches i ts height in the 7th Century . Thi s i s also where Xuan Zang went to Indi a to start gathering books from the Buddhist writings and bringing it back to China. His exploit has been romanti cized into the Journey to the West, the Mo时也y King . That’ s the Journey to the West. And the monk that i s in that story is Xuan Zang, and he is an actual person who lived in the 7th Century, who made the pilgrimage to India to collect Buddhist su tras, writings, and brought them back to China. 44
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I do have to say that there was one peri od of tim e during the Ta n g Dynasty when Buddhist and Daoist monks and nuns were forbidden to practice medi cine . The reason why is because during thi s period of time, there was already the beginning of the controversy between the Ling Pai S争 派 and the R u Pai 儒 派 . L i n g Pai means the Bell School or the Group of Bell people, because what they woul d be essentiall y were monks who would go from village to vi ll age and they woul d have a stick that they would carry wi th a bell that would ring. When the bell rings, you know that these monks were in town and a lot of these were healers . So you would go ou t and get healed by these Buddhist or Daois t nuns or priests and so forth. And we mentioned earlier that there was the establishment of medical schools . They are not real l y major schools . They are very small school s. It’s onl y really in the Song Dynasty that v,re have the bi g Imperial School, but there was already some establi shment of medical school s taking place, especially during the Sui Dynasty in the 5th Centutry A.CE. The existence of a medi cal school means that now what you have are people that are l i terates. And the l i terary practi tioners are refered to as R u Pai. The Ru Pai 儒 派 are the school of practitioners that are trained in school s . So they are the schol ars, Confucian schol ars, and what they are basi cally going to do i s they are going to tell the Emperor that members of the Ling Pai are illiterates. These are illiterates, these monks, these nuns . Remember, in the old days, why would you go to a temple and become a nun or a monk? I t’ s usually considered in a Confuci an society that when you Zhu f ia, when you leave home, which means you become a monk, and that’ s what the word means in Chin ese, that usually means that you must be disenchanted with l i fe, that means you must have been so severely disappointed. If not, you must have been an orphan that you would go to temples . So to them, these people that are entering temples are usually people that really see life as a very negative thing and they are 廿ying to change by going i nto spi ri tuality, or they are orphaned . So they usually don’t have very much edu cation. So consequentl y, when you have these medical school s devel opin g, they are going to say that medicine should be practi ced primarily by the Ru Pai and not by the Ling 钟 ， which means again Bell, Pai 派 ， the Bell School . Of course, that doesn’t l ast too long because whil e the Emperor has the ears of these Confuci an scholars, remember, Bud dhi sm still dominates. And then l ater on they will change that Imperi al order so the monks are allowed to practi ce medicine again . But, in the Song Dynasty, you will see that that is definitely going to take place, where more and more they are going to get rid of apprenticeships, or downgrade apprenticeships, and 出at you have to really go to an Imperi al school to learn. What thi s means is that once you go to school, school, as you all know, if you go to NESA, if you go to any school, they are going to have mandated curri culum . Everyone has to learn something that everyone agrees on. That keeps you in the community. And that m andated curriculum tha t takes place in the Song Dynasty, means that everyone believes the same thing . As you do that, you have fewer and fewer traditions, because everyone believes the same thing, then you have to stay more and more in that 45
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style, as we know it in the West, we call it the ICM tradition. That’s a mandated curri culum . 4.
Their Influences in Chinese Mythology
Buddhism and Dao is m and Confu ci anism are the three big philosophies that contiue to dominate Chinese Medicine even today. We defi nitel y know that these three religions have influences in Chinese mythology, because with Daoism comes Gods and definitel y Buddha became a God in Chinese culture . Confucius became canonized, and became a God . So when you look at the study of Gods or m ythol ogy, there are Gods that deal wi th supremacy . They overl ook something, they are the Slzang Di ’ s, the Lords on the High . We have Gods of Nature. We looked at Tu Di Gong Gong. He’s a God of Nature . We talked about the idea 出at they reside on a tree. So they have Tree Gods. ＼八1 e can have geography. There is a God of thi s mountain . There is God of thi s lake. So there are geography Gods. There are also Gods of professions . We already mentioned one God of Chinese Medicine, Shen No ng, the God of Agri culture is also a God of Chinese Herbal Medicine. That’s a profession . Later on we will see a lot more individuals that have been canonized and became Gods of Chinese Medicine. H uang Di sometimes is seen as a G od of Chinese Medicine. There are Gods that refer to welfare, like the Three Stars, we mentioned : the G od of Longevi ty, Prosperity and Wealth . That’ s a wel fare God . I need more money, l et me go to the God of Weal th and rub hi s tummy or something like that as some of us might do. That’ s a wel fare God . A God of compassion, Quan Yin i s perhaps the most famous God of Compassion, or Goddess of Compassion . We have protection Gods, Guan Di, who actually lived during the Spring / Autumn period . He was a general for one of the Warring States. He is the one that you often see in many restaurants, protecting the restaurant from burglaries or robberies and all that. That’ s a God of Protection . And of course we have Gods of illness. The most important God of illness was the God for Small Pox in China, because tha t was consi dered one of the most deadly di seases . So the one that was often worshipped the most was the God of Small Pox, which became a very important one, especiall y during the S o ng Dynasty when you had small pox epidemics, when at the same time in the Song Dynasty we saw devel oping a vaccinati on for small pox, which then later on, Chinese discovered tha t vaccinati ons were ineffective and they began to abandon the use of vaccinations. So 出is is again part of this domain of Gods. 5.
Qi
&
Its V arious Connotations
The last component in terms of philosophy i s the i dea of Qi and its various connotations . Qi was invented, or the i dea of the word Qi was developed during the Zlzou Dynasty . It has various connotations. This is the earliest word for Qi. Some of you may have seen this 采 . That’ s the w a y Qi is w毗en originally before it became to l ook like this 氛 ， which i s the modern Qi, unless you do simplified where all they do is take out the character M i 米 ， for grain. So as you might begin to see, the early character here is very close to the character Tian 46
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天 . It' s not exactly Tinn, because there are certain things going or飞祟 ． Those are my arms 甘ying to reach up towards Heaven and my l egs are trying to reach up toward Heaven as wel l . And underneath it is the radical for Fire. So what is Qi? Qi is the Fire tha t emanates from Heaven. Qi is the d esires, the motivating force of Heaven. The idea of Heavenly Mandate, Tia n . So that' s what Qi is. To have life is to have a Mandate, to have a Destiny . That' s Tum, that’ s Qi. So that is one of the earliest interpretations of Qi. Later on we’ d see, here you have the character for Humanity 人 . So here you see that just written like this ／� . And you have the character for Grain 米 . And wh at you have is a receptacl e "L . I t is usually a receptacle, a container, but a semi-container. It is not fully closed . Just like \vhen you use the word Wind, you see Wind i s a closed container, Feng 凤 ， which is \vritten like thi s . But here you have a semi-open container, and at the same time you . There’s a line between these two . So what you have is have a separation Grain in an open container that is feeding Humanity, and at the same time, it is that Grain that is feedi ng Hum ani ty that al so, in some w ays, cau ses us to be separated from Humani ty . Remember, we are dependent on Qi to li ve, but at the same time it is that dependency that keeps us separarted from what we woul d call the Divine. That’ s what leads to the idea of Immortali ty . And thi s is why in Daoist writings, they say if you want to be a Immortal, you have to avoi d the Five Grains, the Five Mi. Becau se the Grains, the more you are depending on Grains, physical sustenance, the m ore you really are separarted from the Divine. As some of you know, in China they actually have offi ci al Immortal s in China, Zhen Ren . Some of you might have read abou t them in Qi Gong articles. There is one woman who is an offi cial Immortal in China. She, basically doesn't eat. She is in her 70s and they say that every four months, she drinks a little water or maybe dri nks a littl e soup and that’s i t. She doesn't eat, so 出ey think of her as som eone 认1ho has defini tely reached a point that they don’t need any physical su stenance, but they are still alive. And they call her a Zhen Ren . So that is like an Immortal . So she is offi ci ally recognized as an Immortal in China . There are 1 0 of them I beli eve, where they basically don’t eat and they are able to still be alive. \Vhat they are saying i s that all they are absorbing then i s the True Qi, the Primodial Qi, the Yuan Qi, that they associ ate wi th Heaven . And that is a practice 由 at already started with Yang Zhu, whom I talked about, to keep the physi cal body from decay and to spend all your efforts nourishing that. All of these peopl e that are official ones are all hermits by the way. They all live in a mountain. They live in a cave. They basically are all he 口ηits. The noti on here is that, that i s what you need to do to get away from the passions that very often separates us. So the word Qi became known as then the Grain of Hum ani ty, Breath of Humanity . Question: How come there are no American Immortals? Answer: I’m quite sure there are. They just haven’t been offi ciall y documented . Question: You don’t hear abou t them . 47
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Answer: I’m quite sure i f you are an Immortal, then you don’ t want people to hear about you. I mean a lot of times, as I tell my students, you probabl y can go i nto one of these mountai nous areas and come across a person who i s j u st carrying a bucket of water, or doing somethi ng, and that person could be an immortal . If someone adverti sed themselves as an Immortal, probably a lot of peopl e are going to be m aki n g pil gri mages there, and I’m qui te sure the sanctuary that they are in would be highly di sturbed . So I’m qui te sure that most people don’ t want people to know if they are. Okay, the word Qi to Confuci anists, has moral implications. To Mencius, the \vord Qi means Moral Force . That Q i is Moral Force. Thi s i s going to be taken up l ater on by Zhu Xi of the S o ng Dynasty who then say, well if Qi is Moral Force, then Qi must have Principle, and Principle must have Qi. And ou t of that cam e, in medical practi ce, that all Organs have Qi, so all Organs must have a moral responsibili ty, a Principl e . So in the Song Dynasty, we begin to i temize what is the Principle of all the Organs, because in the Song Dynasty the Organs were a very popul ar thing . So when you say, Liver Stores the Blood, Liver Controls the Smooth Flow of Q i, Liver Opens to the eyes or Liver Houses the Hu n, Liver mani fests through the muscles or the sinews, that’s the Princi ple of the Liver, that’s the Li 理 . That’ s a very Confucianist thing to do, saying that everyone has their responsibilities and you want to m ake sure that everything in your body lives up to its responsibility . If it doesn’t, then what do you have? D i sease . Rem ember, C onfucianism is that if we don ’ t l i v e up to our responsibilities, that’ s when we don’ t benefit. In this case your famil y is your body. That’ s what you have to do. So thi s is Mencius and how he infl uences who was responsible for Neo-Confu ci anism in the Song Dynasty, a person named Zhu Xi.
X rm Zi, another Confu ci anist discipl e says that Qi i s the source of the Cosmos . Qi is that whi ch i s the source of all things. It’ s also very Daois t in a lot of ways. Xun Zi was a Confu ci anist that was influenced by Daois m . So already you would hear him being referred to as a Neo-Confucianist.
Now that we’ve got the phil osophy out of the way, we can tackl e everything that relates to Chinese Medicine. Question: I’m just wondering how Principle rel ates to Virtue, if that is simil ar. Answer: Okay. That’ s the word De， 德 as in Dao De Jing. And Principle is the word Li， 理 . By the way, the word De is also used by Confucianists a lot, by Confu cius, that is, whereas L i became more predominant with Confucianist schol ars in later generations . The word De a s in the case of Dao De Jing is intrinsi c power, and L i i s efforted power. That would be the way that I would clarify the hvo terms. That is, intrinsi c in all of us is 出at we have a gift, a power. It doesn’t have to be a power in term s of virtuous power like Benevolence or Compassion. That 48
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is not what they are referring to, bu t that all of us have something that we are good at. If we recognize what that thing is that we are good at, and we u tilize tha t, then we are being ”virtu ou s ” . We are living u p to what our innate capabilities are. That’ s the word De. Li, on the other hand, really requires a certain amount of effort to achieve. When they talk abou t the term, Zu San L i, ST-36, L i 里 i s a di stance, i s a measure of distance. In parti cul ar i t i s about 1 I 3 of a mil e, the Chinese L i is about 1 I 3 of a mil e . And what you have next to this character, Li i s Wang 王 Wang is a te口口 that people started to use during the Zhou Dynasty . Wang means a king, not an emperor. A king would be king of the state, an emperor would rule an empire, in which case they would put this character on top of that word Wang and this would be Huang 皇 . So this would be an emperor. That’ s the difference between th e two. What they put on top of the character Wang is the character B町， white. And as som e of you know, vvhite is associa ted wi th the color of Metal . Metal is associ ated with the concept of moral virtu e . When someone has Metal, they have morality, because in terms of Five Elements, Metal is som eone who is able to organize and prioritize what is right and what i s wrong. That’ s why the Lungs are often seen as that which is abl e t o see what is Exogenou s in terms of Pathogeni c Factors and what is right. That’ s why they are associ ated with the Prime Minister. So when you have moral virtue, then you fittingly have the Mandate of Heaven. You are the emperor. So 出at' s where that word comes from . Here you are. You are traveling a distance . You are moving and going into doing som ething in life . And when you are able to come to conquer that distance, \vhen you are abl e to have a conquest of that distance, then you have Principle. What I mean by that i s, remember the i dea here of Sovereignty. Sovereignty means that when there are no longer any quests left, then you are at peace with yourself, and you are now your own true ruler. \Vhen you no l onger have any quests, no longer have anything that need s to be done. A quest means questions that need to be asked, things 出at I’m not comfortable with . It means I have to tra vel an d m ake an effort to come to understand what those qu estions are and in some ways find an answer to those questi ons. So when you take the quests and move it into a conquest, like a king does, then you have Principle. You have understanding . So the word L i requires a certain amount of effort to achieve, to become virtuous in that end . L i can be transl ated as virtuous, but it requires a certain amount of effort. That’ s the difference between these two words. This was used by Confuciu s early on. This is used by hi s disciples, Li, in Neo-Confu cianist theory .
III.
Medical Corpus - Nei Jing 内 锺
Now we can get into the medi cal corpus, the Nei Jing. Now everything becomes in rel a tionship to Chinese Medi cine. The Nei J i ng is essenti ally influenced by the Yi Jing, the Book of Changes . There are defi nitely a lot of concepts relating to the Book of Changes that are in the Nei Jing, ranging from 49
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concepts that belong to the Pre-Heaven sequence of the Yi Jing and the Post Heaven sequence of the Nei Jing . We know that Daoism, or in parti cul ar, the School of Naturali sm and i ts influence from Daoism, also has a m司or impact on the Nei fing. Confuci ani sm also has an impact on the Nei Jing. To acknowledge that there i s such a thing as Perverse Q i, X ie Qi, and that there i s something in your body that defends against thi s Perverse Qi, Zlzeng Qi, would be indicative of Confuci anist thi n king . Because in Daois m, everything i s relative. There is no such thing as bad things. I t’ s just a l ack of harmony that you are looking at. Again, a key word that’ s in the Nei Jing, Harmony, a Daois t notion. But once you say, well this is negative, this is Perverse, then that is Confucianist, because you have the moral obli gation to deal wi th that whi ch is what the Upright Qi i s about, Zheng Qi versu s Perverse Qi. This i s written prior to Buddhi sm, so i t’ s only i n later edi ti ons o f the Nei Jing that w e see Buddhist i nfluence . S o mainly you see Da01切z, Confuci anism and the i nfluence from the Book of Changes . The Nei Jing i s usually broken into four textbooks. Today we know of them primarily by two, the S u Wen and the L ing Shu, because the others have been considered lost. The Nei Jing also has the Tai Su. . The Tai Su you often see when people do commentaries on books . It i s often associated with a person nam ed Ya ng Shang Xi of the S u i Dynasty (581 - 6 1 8 A . C E . ) . A n d what Ya ng Shang Xi did was that he further began to edit the Su Wen . It is due to him that you have the Five Attributes that we associ ate wi th the Five Zang. So when you read the Su Wen and they say the Hu n is in the Liver, the Po is in the Lungs, the Yi is in the Spleen and the Shen i s in the Heart, that was developed, or that was inserted into the Su Wen, in particular Chapter 5 of the Su Wen is where you see thi s appear, by Ya ng Slz a ng X i . And again the reason why is during the S u i Dynasty, there was improvement in papermaking . There was also improvement in block printing. So instead of books that were written on silk, and instead of books that were wri tten on bamboo, now you have a l ot more books that are wri tten on paper. And what he did was he reorganized some of the material i n the S u Wen and h e came up with w h a t we refer t o as another updated versi on, l ike a di fferent edition, Edition 3, or something l i ke that. And he called that Tai S u . Now the Tai S u i s considered l ost. We may see later editions of books that say "the Tai Su says this＇’ . But the Tai Su is basically a revamping of the Su Wen . Just a s we see i n the Tang Dynasty, as w e will talk about, Wang Bing. Wang Bing essentially is going to make the Su Wen become 81 chapters. Historians b asically argue that the Su Wen was not 81 chapters. It became 81 chapters because you probabl y have a Daois t who was interested in thi s idea of 81 . So they made the chapters 81, and 队la ng Bing was highly i nterested in Chinese astrology, and the idea of the Six Qi, the Six Divisions or the Six Flow . So i t’ s most likely that the chapters in the S u Wen that have the astrologi cal i nfluences were inserted by Wang Bing to make the book 81 chapters, but also to put hi s own bias into it. So sometimes they will refer to that as the Ta ng Dynasty edition of the S u Wen . That’ s another aspect. Then you have the Ming Tang. We know the Ming Tang existed because a l ot of books quote from it, like the ]ia Yi Jing quotes from the the Ming Tang . The Ming Tang is where the idea of Mu Points comes from . If you read the Su Wen, 50
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there’ s no discussion of M u Points . They don’ t say， ”Oh, thi s i s a M u Point.” And we know that by the tim e you have the Nan Jing, they already describe the Mu Points. But the Na n J ing , remember, is a debate about what was written in the Su We n and the L ing Sh u . So somehow, where is that coming from ? We don’t know. But the M ing Tang is sai d to have the description of the Mu Points . It i s also the M ing Tang that talks about the X i Cleft Points. Remember, we don’ t real l y have an actual descripti on of Xi Cleft Points. There i s an idea of what "Cleft” means in the Su Wen, usually in relati onship to the ravines. Ravines mean w ater, l eakage, so Xi Cleft Points are usually used for a l ot of leakage of some type of fluid, sweating, diarrhea, frequent urination. That’s one association that we make from the S u \!Ven alread y . But the actual Points themselves, and their functions as Points for emergency situati ons, that is sai d to come from the Ming Tang . The problem with the Ming 日ng is that there are m any versions of it. So by the time we get into the Song Dynasty, everyone cl aims that they have the real Ming Tang . “ I have the real one. I ’ m going to write it. Yours is not the real one . ” So no one really knows whi ch one is the authenti c versi on of the Ming Tang. The one that we tend to use i s the one that i s written by Wang Wei Yi. Wang Wei Yi w a s a physici an that w a s comm issi oned by the S o ng Dynasty Imperial College, the medical college. And 队la ng Wei Yi was commissioned to
come up wi th 队10 figures that had acupuncture Points on them . And, of course, he came up wi th the two Bronze Figures i n the Song D ynasty . Wang Wei Yi, when asked where he i s getting these Point l ocati ons from and the depi ction of these figu res, he says， ” From the M i ng Ta n g . ” And he wri tes a manual to accomp any these two bronze figures that is a m anual he says comes from the M i n g Ta ng . And since he is being comm i ssioned by the I mperi al Medi cal Coll ege, his textbook has greater credibil i ty, because it is sanctioned by the Imperi al School . That is the reason why a l ot of people, when they quote from the Ming TaJ咚， g enerally use hi s versi on . But we can easily dispute that. Just because he is commissioned by the Imperi al School doesn' t mean his is better than the other versions . So as a result, some books would simply be more poli te, and they say the 儿1ing Tang i s no l onger in exi stence, which really is saying that they don’t want to acknowledge any version. And others would say， 吁’m using this Ming Tang version . ” For exampl e, when you read the Blue Poppy Press Jia Yi Jing, they quote from the M ing Ta ng. The first footnote says that the M i n g Tang i s n o longer i n existence. S o they basically are saying that they don’ t w ant to adhere to any version of the Ming Tang . That’ s a translation. These are the four books that we know that are all p art of the Nei Jing. So in the Nei Jing, we only know the Su Wen and the L ing Shu, but really it has four books . Ta i S u , perhaps, is not reall y a book, but an updated version of the S u 1八fen . . But definitel y we have a M ing Ta ng that seems to have theories that we don’ t find in the Ling Shu or the Su Wen .
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A.
Su Wen 素 闰
Now getting into these parti cular books : in the Su Wen, it’s like any of the earl y philosophical texts, it’s a dialogue. You are having a conversation . ＼月ve know it’ s with the Yellow Emperor and a number of the ministers . The most prominent mini ster of course is Qi B o . But he also talks to other individuals as well, like Lei Gong. Lei Gong w.as usually rel ating to surgi cal types of methods. What is important in the Su Wen in terms of organization i s that first they give you the basic theori es that govern Chinese Medicine coming from a Daois t background. That is, the i dea of the Five Seasons, the idea of the Five Elements, the cyclical n ature. But more importantly, Chapter 1 already says that the role of medi cine is preventative medicine. Chapter 1 of the Su Wen already says that the reason why we cannot live to 1 00 years old i s because, and they itemize what eventually we could call climatic factors, they talk about emotional factors, and those of you who have been to the Su Wen class know that the principle emotions that the Su Wen tends to be focusing their attention on is anger, fear and grief. Those are the three primary emotions that they tend to focus their attention on. Yes, we can bring in all seven emotions, but i n tru th, i t i s really those three emotions: anger, fear and gri ef, and sometimes maybe pensiveness, but basically it is those three emotions . They talk about entering the chamber of love in an intoxicated state, sexual overindulgence, dietary overindul gence, not being able to dress properl y . Again, it’s saying that we do not take care of ourselves and as a result we become ill . So the theme already i s preventative medicine in the S u
Wen. Then they go into this noti on, early on already, in Chapter 1 they talk about, when we are not following the syn chroni city with nature, what we are . Thieving Wind, a term that going to have is Thieving Wind, Zei Feng 贼 凤 is very important in Chinese Medicine. In the Nan Jing, it means that you have the Control Cycl e taki ng place . They say that when you have Thieving Wind in the Liver, it means that you have essenti ally the Liver being overacted upon by Metal . Na n Jing, remember, i s a very Five Element School orientation . But what is meant is that when the body is not m aintaining preventative measures, (not dealing with) change, Wind, Wind is change, Yi Jing, (so) Wind robs you of your vitality, your Qi, Thieving Wind, (which calls for) preventative medi cine . And furthermore, early on in the Nei Jing, in Chapter 3 of the Nei Jing, they go further and they make that famous statement that Wind is the cause of l OOs of diseases, that 飞Nind i s the root of all pathology, the inability to change is the root of all pathology, not being in synchronici ty with the cycles of nature. Again, going back to thi s i dea of preventative medicine and not being in harmony, these are the key words that they like to use. But nature is going to be the cause of all di seases, and furthermore later on in the Su Wen, they gi ve you the actual pathology, and what Wind does to the body . And the thing that ,,ve know about in the S u Wen is that the pathological process that is being described is anatomi cal . Basically in the S u Wen, they do give you a theory about the progression of disease. But it is very different than for example, the Slzang Han Lwz tradition . The theory that is basically produced 52
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and focu sed upon by the Su ＼八len is the theory of on Wind, and the other theory that they have is on Cold, so these are the two predominant factors that they were focusing on . You can see that these theories becom e the precursors to the Slwng Han Lun Theory, whi ch essenti ally talks about the origin of disease due to Zlzong Feng, Affli ction by Wind, or Shang Ha n, Inj ury due to Col d . Where are they getting that information from ? From the S u Wen . So even though we can say that there are Six Excesses, L i u Yin : Wind, Heat, Damp, Summer-heat, Dryness and Cold, the Su 队＇en really focuses on Wind and Col d . These two foci become the focu s of the Slzang Han L u n tradition. You 'll see why the Shang Han Lun tradition had to d evelop in the first place anyway . According to the Su Wen, when one contracts Wind, the general areas that it tends to go is first to the head . If it is not resolved, it begins to move into the regi on of the chest, into the bowels, into the abdomen . From the abdomen it goes into the Zang Fu and based on the treatments that we see being described for the Zang Fu wi t 1 the Bladder Shu Poi nts, \Ve know that it enters the Zang Fu via the Bladder Slz u and in particular, entering the Zang, because it really affected the Fu when it was in the abdomen already . So this is an anatomical progressi on. I t’ s going from Yang I head t o the area o f the chest and then abdomen. Even Zhang Zhong Jing is using that theory in developing Tai Yang, Shao Yang, Yang Ming. It is really following an anatomi cal approach . That is common in the time of the Ha n Dynasty, to think that di seases moved anatomical l y . If it’ s not in this fashion, they ,,vould say it moves from the skin, to sinews, fl esh, vessels, to the bone. That would be another way of describing it. Where from there, it goes into the Zang Fu . So these are the two. It was primarily an anatomical concept, whi ch makes sense because if you thi时（ of the Meri dians, the early depiction for the Meridi ans is demonstrated as beginning at the a口且s and the legs, where we think of them originating, and they terminate at the head, the chest, the abdomen. So they are really saying that these pathways of l i fe, the Meridi ans, are also the p athways of not onl y physiology of Qi, but pathways of pathology. And, interestingly enough, we all know that these Meri dians that we found that go back earlier than the Ling Slzu, do not have the Meri di ans connecting wi th the Zang Fu. The Lung Meridi an begins, not LU-1, but LU-1 1, at the thumb, and i t goes into the chest. That’ s it. It doesn’ t go into the lungs. There is no connection between the Lung Meridian and the lungs. I t’ s going anatomically . Because thi s theory i s saying that it doesn't go into the Organs until it gets into the Back Slzu Points. That’s from the Su Wen. If the S u Wen is basing their theory o n earlier Meridians o r early Meri dian texts are basing it on the S u Wen, we can see why it m akes sense from that point of view . One of the biggest chal lenges that we are g oing to see w i th the development of the Primary Meridians is now, all of a sudden, the Meridians start to connect with the Zang Fu that they are named after, while the earliest Meridi ans do not have any connecti on . In other w ords, from the findings that we have, most of what you hear people talk about is the medi cal li terature, in 1 973, in H u mz a n Province in the city of Cha ngsha, at l east close to the city of 53
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Changsha, in an area that they refer to as Ma Wang Dui 禹 王 堆
, they found a seri es of books . And among them were medical books . They found what essentially were 14 m edical books. Some of them are actually sexology books, but they put them under medi cal books . And the medical books 出at they found had the acupuncture channels on them, which at that point there were only 1 1 channels, because we know that we invented the Heart Meridian later on. All of those Meridi ans began at the limbs and they all terminated at the head, the chest and the abdomen. None of them had any connection whatsoever to the Zang Fu. So again, it’ s in line with the progression theory that the S u Wen was trying to demonstrate. Question: \i\That did they call them if they didn’t call them by the Organs? Answer: They actu ally have names like Tai Yang Meridian, Slzao Yang, that type. So again， 由e Yin Yang theory . And, actually, some of them they called them like the Shoul der Meri di an, the E ar Meridi an, the Tooth Meridian. Tai Yang Meridian was called the Shoulder Meridian. The Slzao Yang Meridian was called the Ear Meri dian. The Ya ng Ming was called the Tooth Meri dian. So they had names like that too. So there was thi s i dea of the Yin and Yang and when we started making the associ a ti on of what Ta i Ya ng could mean, of, l et’ s say, the arm s, Small Intestine, then people say, " Well, gee, why i s it not connecting wi th the Small Intestine？” Argu abl y, we could say that in early textbooks， 出at was not how the pathology went. It did not go from th e Meridian to the Organ. It went to the anatomical areas of the body, and then, it would go into the Organs that they are associated with. This i s one cru cial aspect that we see in the S u Wen . Already we can see that there is some di screpancy . If we follow the etiology of Wind, and Col d is pretty close to this, just that Col d will go to where Yang Qi is located which is the lower back. So from the abdomen, there is going to be a visi t to the sacrum. And from the sacrum, we are going to see, that it goes again into the Za ng Organs . And, interestingl y enough, when you read the S u Wen, they have conditions like Liver Wind, Liver Col d . They don’t have conditions: Liver Damp . There is no such thing . Again, they look at the pathol ogy that when it enters these Organs, then you can call it by i ts name, Liver Wind. Wind has gone through all of this and has gone into BL-1 8, to develop into a Liver Wind condi tion, or a Spleen Wind conditi on . Thi s is what we see, first of all, in the Su Wen, that Wind is one of the primary m otivating forces of all disease. That’ s why they say it’ s the root of all pathol ogy . It’ s the cause of Hundreds of Di seases . And when we look at the acupuncture part, we will see that indeed it supports that early Meridians of Chinese acupuncture. The second aspect that we see with the S u Wen, i t’ s in the same chapter where they talk abou t Wind, i s Col d . Col d pretty m u ch follows the same pathology. There’s l ess i nclination, however, to focus on the head. There’s m ore inclination to focus on the chest, the abdomen, the lower back and then into the Zang Fu, in particular the Zang, via the Bladder S h u Points. The Bladder Shu Points, definitely in the Su Wen, were seen as Transporting Points . They were 54
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along the Meri di an, Bladder, Ta i Yang, which i s the Meridian that deals with Exogenous Pathogeni c Factors the m ost. That' s why you have Exogenou s Pathogenic Factors, Wind and Col d, and eventually, it i s that Meridian that has to deal wi th Exogenou s Pathogeni c Factors, Ta i Ya n g , th a t a l l o w s these Pathogenic Factors to move directl y into the Organs themselves, vi a the Bladder Transporting Points. These Meri dians or these Points were j u st named as Shu Points. They say it enters Liver Sh u . Later on we say, thi s is part of the Bl adder Meri d i an because we have to now say where shoul d we put these S h u Points under the auspice of？ 飞i\i'ell, it has to be under the auspice of that which deal s with Exogenous Pathogeni c Factors . That which i s dealing with Pathogenic Factors requires the m ost Yang of body, because Yang Qi has to come all the way to the surface, which is Ya ng, that should be Ta i Ya ng, which is refl ective of Ki dney’ s Ya ng goi ng all the way up the Bladder Meridian of the legs, Bl adder. We are inventing thi s. Thi s i s Chinese Medicine coming and inventing these Sim Points that m u st belong to the Bl ad der Meri di an, even nowaday s, when you study the Bladder Channels, you know where the Bladder Shu Points are located along the Bladder Meridian . That’ s the trajectory that is seen as a sub-branch of the Bl adder Channel . That’ s the branch that comes at BL- 1 0 . It goes all the way down al ong the Inner line of the Blad der and as it goes all the way down along the i nner line of the Bladder, it ends at BL-23. That’ s it. It doesn’ t go further than that. At BL-23, we have another trajectory that comes out that goes to BL-40, meeting up with the trajectory that came from the Outer Bladder line and went to B L-40 . That ou ter Bladder line is the one that goes all the way to BL-67. Noti ce, the I nner Bladder line i s pretty much like a disti nct line of its own: BL- 1 0 t o BL-23. ＼年hy all the w a y up t o BL-1 0? Because, BL- 1 0 deals with thi s area that has a lot to do wi出 the Wind W arehouse, GV- 1 6 . Wind is the predominant focus that we are looking at. That' s the first aspect that we can see about the Su Wen. B.
Ling Shu 重 框
Then we have the other component, whi ch i s the Ling Sh u . And, thi s i s w h y t h e Bl adder Points a r e t h e m o s t popul ar Points, really, in Classical Acupuncture. Yes, there are certain Points that they talk about that you need to use for diseases above, in the head, but a lot of times, what you see, at l east in the Su ＼八1en, the frequent use of the Bladder Shu Points. The Ling Sim begins to differ substantially, because the Ling Shu is now going to develop more of the theory of the Antique Points . The Ling S h u begins with the Nine Needles. It says, Okay, now we have not just this . . . and by the ,,vay, I shou l d go b ack a little . The S u Wen, in talking about Col d, in Chapter 3 of the S u 队Te n , there is a statement that is very, very important. It says that when one contracts Cold, one must use the Five Flavors; when one contracts Cold, one m u st use the Five Flavors. What are they saying? They are saying to some degree, acupuncture cannot get not get ri d of Cold . M u s t u se the Five Fl avors . What’ s Fiv e Fl avors? Di etary o r herbal medicine, whi ch i s why, now, what do I have to do to develop a treatise to treat Col d ? I have to develop a strategy to deal with Cold by using herbal medi cine : Zha ng Z h o ng Jing . Without that statem ent, Zhang Zhong J i ng w oul d n ’ t have to, 55
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shoul dn’t have to come up with the Slzang Han L u n tradition. And why do we call it the Slz a ng Ha n L u n ? He still says that you can have a condition due to Wind or due to Col d, but his treatise i s called Slzang Han, Injury due to Col d . The original book that is call ed, Slzang Ha n J臼 Bing L u n, Inj ury Due to Col d and Mi scell aneous Diseases, got separated i nto two books . So we know that Zhang Zhong Jing must have looked at, at least the theory is that he probably l ooked at that sta tement in Chapter 3 . Again, there i s another chapter, which el udes m y mind now, that also says the same thing about Col d and the Five Fl avors, where we take that chapter and now develop a form of herbal medicine i n treating Col d . That’ s an important footnote here, that Slzang Ha n L u n came, perhaps, because of that passage that comes from the Su Wen. The Ling S h u i s a book that introdu ced the Nine Needles. If we l ook at Needles, the Iron Age in China evol ves at 500 B.C.E. So the Iron Age in China basically does not occur in terms of having these metal Needles that are depi cted in the Ling Shu, these would not have exi sted pri or to 500 B.C.E. During that period of time, the Chinese began to develop iron and am ong those are metal or i ron N eedles. Pri or to that they were u sing stone Needles. In the Han Dynasty, we have gol d and silver Needl es, bu t there are differences in terms of the alloys. The L ing Sim also earl y on begins to itemize the Anti que Poi nts, even before they describe the traj ectories of the Prim ary Meridi ans, where they do something that i s very uni que, and tha t i s that they add to these Meridians the Organs that they are associ ated with . They develop Internal Branches to these External Branches that we see in earl y acupuncture. They are developing these Internal Branches an d now they are saying, you don’t have to look at he S h u Points any l onger. You can l ook directl y a t the Meridians themselves i n dealing with these Organs. And like the concept of Slz u, whi ch means Transporting, and it is abou t transporting Water, the Yang of ＼月vater, now, these Antique Points that are being devel oped are going to be speci ficall y deal ing \vi th i m agery of transporting Water, \vhi ch means it will resonate with the Organs that they are named after. And that becomes the W aterways system, from the Jhzg Well to the He Sea . So again, thi s imagery of \t\Tater probably comes from the imagery of the Shu Points of Tai Yang.
Ling Shu, by i ts name, tell s us that thi s is a Compass, this is an Axis . That' s the term; Shu refers to a compass, an axis. And the word Ling refers to the Soul . There are some debates about the word Ling and Shen . Some people think that Ling is more primary an d Shen i s secondary . Others, including myself, think to the contrary, that Slzen is primary and Ling is secondary. So sometimes, you will see them used interchangeably i n that fashion. But the idea here is that the word Shen， 神 Spirit, is rooted in ancestral worship, because what you have here i s the radical o n the left for the character that w e saw earlier, Zong， 宗 ， that’ s the ”tripod" that we saw, making offerings to our ancestors in one’ s house. When you take this character and you create a radical for it, thi s is the character that it comes from . And the phonetic part of this is the character Shen 申 . This is the phoneti c. Thi s i s pronounced Shen . What Shen means, as in the term Slzen Mai, BL-62, i s to extend . What you have i s the character Tian 田 ， as in Dan T ian , 56
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fi el d, but more importantly, it i s an agri cultural field . You have a plot of l an d a n d you begin t o divide it up . That's Tia n . That’ s what the word means. Tia n al so means when you talk to an agriculturi st and you describe what they are farming, they would refer to their Tian, their fiel d . What you are saying is that in this Tian, there are the Earth Gods that lie below 田 and there are the Ancestrals that lie above 田 . And, what you are doing i s you are trying to extend into those two realms of belief that we talked about. That i s part of early Chinese worship : Ancestral and Earth Gods. The extensi on i s that there is l i fe that extend s beyond the feel of l i fe that we live in. There i s an upper and l ower worl d . And what you are doing in the word Shen is you are paying homage. You are extending to your ancestors, because that is usually foremost, Ancestral . So what Spirit reall y means i s that whi ch connects you to your Ancestries. So one who has Spiri t is one who has connection to their Ancestries. That would be the earliest descripti on of Shen. It’ s not God or Spiri ts. So the word Spiri t reall y means something more than that. It’ s one’s connecti on to one’ s Ancestries. The word L ing 重 ， o n the other hand, here you have three characters . The first character is Yu 雨 ， which means rain. So it already suggests a concept that is relati vel y Yin, rai n . Remember in Chinese the notion of rain is very simple. Just like we think of, it is the celesti al force of Heaven, the Sun, pushing the terrestrial force of Earth, and as that celestial force pushes the terrestri al force and that force ri ses above, what we think of as condensati on today, that produces rain. So i t is thi s idea of this Yin force l eaving the Earth and then coming back to E arth. That’ s the recycling process that we get Yu. So again, something that was contained, agai口， you see, just like the Yu radi cal here, it i s a "house” and there i s these drops coming back down. Now the other character you have here is the three mouths. One character, Kou 口 ， means mouth . And now you have three of them, whi ch by the way the character for pin 品 which means a product, something coming out of a mou th i s a product, a production. And then you have, as you probably recognize already, the character for shaman, Wu 巫 ， that we just talked about. What the shaman does i s they go into a realm of the ground or above and they try to summon this Yin factor, rain, to come out of an Ori fice, to come out of their m outh, to come out of something that they are able to understand where this Soul, thi s entity, this spirit, is able to come from . And again, the Chinese believe that these three openings, again, mouths, were where the Soul departs the human body . Generall y it was the mouth, the anus, and that’ s why the anus was also referred to as Po Men, as some of you know, the Doorway of the Po . And the nose is the third Orifice here. And that is why it was common practice during the ancient times, like the Han Dynasty, that when someone di es, you take jade and you place it is their mouth. You pl ace it in their anus and in some cases they might even place i t on their nose. Most commonly i t i s usually the mouth and the anus, because the i dea i s that j ade represents eterni ty . So the notion i s， ” May your soul be eternal ” . That’ s a ceremonial representation of 出at. What the shaman is trying to do when they go i nto another worl d is they are trying to get i nformation from the deceased, from that which left the Orifi ce, and trying to bring them back l ike rain coming back down . The idea is that these Souls have this wet, d amp type of connotation to it. This was the word Ling. 57
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The L in g Sim 框 ， here you see the character for Wood 木 and then again you have a container and it’s a container of what? The three openings 品 Do you see the three openings i n there? It transl ates as compass, direction, axis. Pivot i s another term that we someti mes see . For the Ling Sim they say Spiritual Pivot. So the Ling Sim was a text that is intended by its name to guide you back to your own Soul . It was a Spiritual Compass . It was l ike reading an atlas to your own Soul . To understand that atlas, you have to understand rain, water, the Waterways that they basically try to impart in their discussi on . VVhen you look at the Li ng Sim there i s an emphasi s in the L ing Sim, and people like to quote from i t, that is unlike the S u Wen . The S u We n focu ses m ostly on Clim ati c Factors . There i s very li ttle mention . . . there is some mention, maybe I shouldn’ t say li ttl e, bu t compared to the L in g Sim, there i s very little m ention of things rel ating to the Spirit or to th e Emotions . Whereas in the Ling Slz u, on the other hand, the discussion of the Emoti ons predominates in a lot of the chapters of the book. We know that it is the Emoti ons, according to the Chinese, especi ally Confuci ani sts as well as Daois ts, that disrupts one’ s Soul and causes diseases . The m ost popul ar would be Chapter 8, the chapter that is called Ben Shen . It is so popular that there is even one textbook devoted just to that, Rooted in Spirit, Ben Shen, Chapter 8 of the Ling Sim . In that chapter we have the basi c, I mean, that’ s n ot the onl y chapter. . . there are still a lot of other chapters, but the basi c premise that after introdu cing a number of these Acupuncutre Points, remember they also introduce the Acupuncture Meridi ans, after the Points are introduced, and then they have this dangling chapter on 出e Spirits . Here are the Spirits. So now we have to l ook at that and see that basically what they are giving us is that the Meridi ans are a way of gui ding us back, like a compass, like a roadmap to our own Soul, our own Spirit, so the Li ng Sh u . The name already gives us clues that thi s is a cultivational endeavor. Remember, preventati ve medi cine is fi rst understanding onesel f. One way of understanding oneself is understanding the Meri di ans that are circul ating through yourself and, interestingly enough, when you start reflecting self-aw areness, a key word in Dao is m, when you start refl ecti ng on that, you begin to m a ybe visu alize on it, you begi n to see the connection between these Meridians that didn’t seem to connect with the Organs, beginning to connect with the Org ans now. Thi s i s where we might say that through visualization we developed the Internal Branches. But we couldn’ t say that becau se there is no medi cal evidence, no documented evidence to suggest that the Meridians connected to the Organs 出at they are named after. Early texts don’t seem to show that. And the Ling S h u is really the main text that begin s to demonstrate that there is a connection. In fact, when we see the word 灸 ， this i s Jiu, which means Moxibustion. This is the term that we see i n these earl y Acupuncture textbooks. Zhen 封 can simply be written like this. That means a Needle. In Chinese textbooks, when we start using that for the name of books, we don’ t use that word . We don’t use the word Needle. VVe have the character, Jin 金 ， which means Metal, because i t i s m a d e from metal a n d what w e put instead is this character next t o it 绒 . And 58
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this character, if you just use the character by itself, i t means minus, to subtract. Using Acu puncture to take away stagnation, things that aren’t moving . But more importantl y, I want to suggest that this word comes from a word that is very popular during the School of Naturalism, which is the word Gan �虱 . Gan means a feeling, a sense, an intuition, a mood, sometimes, when you look at it in term s of Emotional th eory . When you put th e heart 心 next to i t, or underneath it, in this case, i t means to have a sensation, to have a feeling about something. And what you are having a feeling about is the notion that if you take an instrument, which in the old days would have been the idea of B ian 眨 B ian means a stone that has the radi cal Shi 石 . Shi i s the chara cter for stone. This i s the stone needle. This i s menti oned in the Shan Hai Jing, The Classic of the Mountain and the Ocean . B ian was a stone needle. The general concept was that these stone Needles must have been sharp because we are thinking ri ght away that we are pierci ng the Points . Highly unlikel y, becau se who in their ri ght mind woul d take a stone and stab themsel ves? That’ s not going to be a natural evolution of hum ani ty . The i dea here is that already, we discover Fire. We know that Fire is a transforrηative factor because we see it when we cook with Fire that it can extract some essences out of the pl ants that we put in. It takes the flavor out of something, that Fire is a transformative component. When I hit mysel f, the natural reacti on is to rub my hand. When I rub m y h and, or even if I don’t rub my hand, what I see is Fire going to my hands. I see infl ammation. I see heat. I see that Fire is trying to transform something. Moxibusti on : I might \vant to take heat and appl y i t myself there. Would that allow for thi s healing to take pl ace? And sure enough, they found that it did . Moxibusti on was the beginni ng of thi s idea and as w e eventually begin t o develop refl exology, and we s e e that there are going t o b e areas that when you do Moxa, it seems to exert another effect on another area . But more importantly, not only do I notice heat does it, but I also noti ce insti nctually if I hi t mysel f that rubbing seems to do i t . We can l ook in the ground and find dull stone instruments and rub an area that seems to be i叫ured . Why ? Because sometimes you mi ght need to . M aybe the area is very precise and i f I get an instrument that i s a little more precise than my fingers, I mi ght really be able to go in there and start working and easing the stagnati on in the area. You might also begin to realize that as you start rubbing the area， 出at this area that I ’ m rubbing begi ns to create, not only l ocal response, but some other responses begin to occur. I t’ s onl y a matter of time 出at when you start rubbing yourself, even wi th acupressure or with an i nstrument, you begin to noti ce something else going on . It could be something that is adverse. Maybe when I’m rubbing this Point, I notice that my stom ach starts to rumbl e. I notice that if I rub this Point I start to feel like I have to go to the bathroom . I have diarrhea or have bowel movements. So the idea i s that the instruments, when rubbed on the mi crocosm, one Point seems to resonate with another part of my body, becau se the word Gan also means resonance, that I can use Acupuncture in terms of stone instruments to resonate with a part of my body externall y . The mi crocosm, the Point, affecting 59
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the whole macrocosm in addition to Moxibustion. The problem of Moxibustion, I take a stick, I pu t it down and I get thi s sti ck to be lit and I bring it closer and closer and inadvertently you mi ght burn your hand . And you notice that when you burn your hand, when you cauterize your hand, or you cauterize a Point, that not onl y is that area now constantly being stimulated, because cauteri zati on really means bruising an area and causing a Point to be constantly stimul ated . It is like an intra-dermal Needle. That means now that I might notice that as that happens, the effect seems to be more long lasting. Now you have greater effects, because I don’t have to keep on doing that. Now it is already constantly being stimul ated. But of course, associated with burning an area as well, you are going to get bli sters . If you burn too deeply, it bli sters up . What happens now? You are going to want to rupture that blister. So here is my stone instrument that I was using to press my Points and now I’m going to rupture it and as it oozes, as that water is released, I find that not only i s the pain and discomfort better, but I also noti ce th at m y conditi on seems to be better. Now the development of Moxibustion Acupressure to actu ally piercing, cutting through, a Point. The maj ori ty of the Nine Needles were used for piercing, breaking up, blood-le忧ing . I notice when I Blood-let, the blood is really dark, like when I bang my hand, it has the sam e color. My hand was purplish. Oh, that must be that bad blood coming out. So now Moxibustion, Acupressure, Blood-letting. And, I notice that if I Blood-l et, and it produces such a pronounced effect on my body, I wonder lvhat woul d happen if I go deeper. I wonder what would happen if I go deeper. Becau se again the notion here . I t’ s superfi ci al . Moxa is superfi ci a l . Unl ess you d o direct Moxa, then it n o longer becomes superficial . Now you have cauterization . But even that is usually the skin, unless you do several cones, several cones means that I am going to try to m ake the burn deeper and deeper and deeper. That’ s what you are really doing, to try to get to the layer deeper and deeper and deeper. But I notice, well, I don’t necessarily need t do that. If I l ance it, I can get blood, but obviously I don’t want to stab it all the \vay deep, because then you are going to have a wound now. It’ s no longer just lanced . So how can I get d eeper wi thout causing all that bleeding . Maybe I can get m y needle t o be m ore fine. Now I h ave deep insertion. Acupuncture Needl es now begin to evolve. That’s the evolution of Acupuncture in its current form from what the early books seem to suggest, that all they did with the Meri dians was cauterizati on . The Ling Sim seems to suggest that all they did, the majority of what they did, was piercing, cu tting, draining bli sters, abscesses, per se. The majority of the Nine Needles w ere that. You might have a Long Needl e. The Filliform Needl e in its current form, the Needle that you use today, the Filliform Needl e was establi shed as the standard by whi ch we stopped using the Nine Needles in the 1 2th century . So we were using all of those Needles all the way up until the Song Dynasty. Then in the Song Dynasty, with Confucianism, Neo Confu ci ani sm, is devel oping now . The vul gari ty of these techni ques and exposing the body so much, Confucianists are going to say that we have to stop doing that. Something that is gentl e, something that is not very invasi ve, Filliform Needles, one of the Nine Needles of the Ling Sim ’ s Nine Needles. That would be the evolution of the acupuncture Needle. 60
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So first i t was a theory of resonance, the belief that if I press here, this will resonate wi th here. Thi s may even resonate with m y lungs or something . Again, I’m obviously pressing LI-4, but the notion of it, it might relate somewhere to my shoulder region . So that’ s the theory of resonance . Then, as we see, perhaps the visualization came in . In any case, I kin d of deviated a little into Acupuncture, but the Ling Shu definitely presents all of that materi al . It basically presents Nine Needl es where we no longer are thinking abou t cauterization. In fact, the Ling Shu, while all the other books I sai d refers to Jiu Jing, the Jiu text, the Ling Slz u is also referred to in Classi cal li terature . They don’t call it Ling Sh u . They call it Zhen Jing, the Treatise or the Text on Needles . It’ s n ot even Zhen Jiu Jing. It’ s just Zlzen Jing , m ostly abou t N eedling . It’ s not so m u ch about Moxibustion . When you read the Ling Sim, there are some descriptions of Moxa, but very littl e, very few descripti ons about Moxa. We'll see that Moxa will take a resurgence by the time we get to the beginning of the Tang Dynasty when Wang Tao is going to say that Acupu口cture is pretty dangerous . It can potenti ally cause a lot of h arm . So Wang Tao is going to be the one that begins the process of discouraging Acupuncture. And at that time, Acupuncture actuall y starts to take a dip down . Even though we still u se it, i t’ s going to start losing i ts popu l arity with Wang Tao . Wang Tao, in fact, his book i s th e fi rst text book wh ere the focu s for trea tments i s pri m ari l y Moxibu stion. Again, you see the cycle repeating i tself. From Moxa, we went back to Moxa, Acupun cture came down and i ts popularity, i ts revi val attempt begins to take pl ace i n the Ming Dynasty . And, actually, i t’ s really very popular today, because of the modern movement. Acupuncture, even though they try to revive it, in the M ing Dynasty, i t never was very popul ar in China from the Tang Dynasty really onward, as compared to other modalities. The Ling Slz u focuses now on not only what the Su Wen presented, but now there’s a lot more description about Waterways. The Ling SllU also begins to emphasize many other Meri di ans that we do not see in the Su Wen . When \Ve l ook at the L ing S h u, they not onl y present to u s the Prim ary Meri dians. We know that they must have had som e diffi culty wi th i t, because wherever the Primary Meridi ans are presented, i t’ s presented with what they call the Roots and Terminations, whi ch was the early acupuncture Meridi ans that began at the digits and terminated at the head for all the Ya ng Meri di ans and then into the chest and abdomen for the Yin Meri di ans, including the throat in this case. But then they also presented the Sinew Meri dians. We don ’ t really see discussi on of the Sinew Meridians as Meri di an concepts . We see it as being described that when som eth i ng goes into th e Coll ateral s, i t can go into the Sinews. But it doesn' t really describe the Sinew Collaterals or the Sinew Channels, except until we get into the L ing Sh u . We see them also describing the Divergent or the Distinct Meri di ans . Again, we don’t see that being described in the S u Wen . In the S u Wen, everything is really just l umped together as a Collateral . The Ling Shu is very specific about the Meridians of Acupuncture and more importantly, the Lin g Shu is also giving us Meridians that you shoul d be treati吨， but they l eave it somewhat ambiguous. One of the things about the Su Wen is that a lot of times they give you what Points to treat. The Ling Shu says， ”Treat Leg Tai Yang. 61
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If no results, go to Arm Tai Yang.” So it’ s ambiguous. It’ s up to you now to 甘y to figure out what Points are they going be using. Most likely, first and foremost, it is going to be the Anti que Points, because they are putting a lot of emphasis on the Antique Points . And that’ s going to be the basis of later commentaries. The Points that they woul d be using is su ch and such . You woul d come up with a commentary on that. So that' s the Ling Shu . c.
Tai Su 太 素
&
Ming Tang 明 堂
The Tai Su we alrea dy mentioned and the Mi n g Tang, as I sai d , is with a lot of m aterial that further supports the Ling Slzu, but gives more Point categories ( p . 49-50) . Depending on what version you read, you are going to have, unfortunately, contradi cting information . So the Ming Tang is somewhat difficult to decipher, unless you know who the author is. Then you kind of know what their background is and you know what their bias is going to be. \i\Te'll come back to these texts a little l a ter on . Let’ s m ove on and look at Acupuncture and we will try to synthesize that material with the Acupuncture.
IV.
Mo dali ties of Healing
The m odal i ties of healing that we have i n Chinese Medicine are Acupuncture, Herbal Medi cine, Preventative Medi cine woul d include diet, and Da o Yin, an early form of Qi Gong. A.
Acupuncture Zhen Jiu 1.
&
It’s Early Roots Cauterization I Moxibustion
El even Channel s
In terms of Acupuncture, we know that there were eleven Channels and the focu s, as I m entioned, was cauterization and Moxibusti on. That we see in the earl y writings. Here I postulated that it probably developed because of a theory of resonance. I postulate that because of the word Gan, the word that they use to represent Acupuncture or Needling into the word Zl z en Jiu . So it was a theory of resonance where by pressing and eventually Needling a Point, the information is going to resonate back to the Zang Fu, whi ch means, cruci al to thi s, that when you Needle, you have intentionality. And that's endemi c in the Ling Shu as well as the S u We n . The Ling S h u specifi cally states tha t those who do not Needle with their Spiri t will not get any effect. 飞八／hat is the Spirit? That' s your intentionality, the i dea of resonance. Thi s term is a term that you see in the S o ng Dynasty writing where they talk about Ga n Ying. Not only is this w ord here, but there is another word Yi1叹 息 . Gan Ying means stimuli response, action-reaction, Gan Ying . For every stimul ation, there is a response . So here, what am I doing? I’m stimul a ting and I’m feeling for the response. That's p art of the cultivation of Acupuncture, to feel the response, to feel De Qi. Acupuncture Zhen 缺 takes this character from that word Gan . A theory of resonance, rather than simply Needling a Point. I already mentioned 62
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that medical writings found at Ma Wang Dui in the outskirts of Changsha in H u mzaJZ . These medi cal wri ti ngs were 14 books . Ten of them where on silk. Four of them were on bamboo and some of the Acupuncture texts that were found includes Z u , which means Leg, B i, shoulder, Shi Yi, el even, Mai Jiu Jing, Channels, Moxibustion Classic. You don’ t see the word Zhen , no Acupuncture there. Yin Yang, Shi Yi, (eleven), Mai Jiu Jing, that is Yin Ym叹， Eleven Channel s Moxibustion Classic. The argument i s that first Acupuncture essentially was Moxibustion. And it follows the myth of creation, m aking use of that fire. And then what happens? We try to cul tivate that fire for transformation and then we try to l ook at that fire as it transform s cooki ng, Shen Na ng and Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, the process of Water that i s in our body i s the Waterways, the Channel system of our bodies. The whole story is built into Acupuncture in many ways. 2.
Stone B ian Needles to Iron Zhen Needles
We mention that they have the word B ian. B ian i s the Stone Needle and tha t we went from the Stone Needle to the Iron, the Zhen Needle. Again, the Iron Age in Chi n a is 500 B . C . E . , wh ere a c tu a l l y the Chi nese are very sophisticated in developing iron . They have the blast furnace, whi ch can make cast iron, so very, very s trong iron Needles. In fact, historians would say that that iron processing did not develop in Europe until the 1 4th Century A . C . E . Thi s advanced iron making by the Chinese w a s already there by 5 0 0 B . C . E . So they were developing these iron Needl es and they were essenti all y using these iron Needles for Blood Letting and for draining ulcers, abscesses boil s and so forth, the Nine Needl es that are mentioned in the Ling Slzu . We also note that during the Han Dynasty, tha t there was a tomb that was di scovered that dates back to the Ha n Dynasty, where they have four gol d Needles and five silver N eedles, those are the ones th a t you often see in m agazines. It’s not like w e find a l ot of that. There’ s very li ttle of that. The theory is peopl e probabl y melted them down and used the silver and gold for other thing s . But again, there’ s been very l i ttle seen of the gol d and silver was a m ajor advocate of Needl es. And with al chemy, and Liu Xing 到 呈 al chem y . 3.
Location of Acupoints
Here we see a concept that they are trying to develop . This i s a refl ection of the divi sions of Yin and Yang. We see it especially when we study the Jia Yi Jing. The notion here, remember the theory we discussed earlier, we have these Ya n g meri dians converging t o the hea d . Thi s i s p art o f the Roots and Terminations theory, that was men tioned in the Jia Yi Jing, as well as in the Ling Shu . The Roots and Terminati ons theory basically states that the Meridians start at the digi ts, because those are the ones that are coming in contact wi th the Exterior, where Wind and Col d is located . And they are moving toward the meeting of all Yang, which is the head. If I’m going to suggest that the eti ology 63
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doesn't have to be External, but can be Internal, then what am I going to have to do? I need to create Meridians that go from the Exteri or to the Interior, but at the same time can go from the Interi or to the Exterior, or back to the Exterior. Now you have the Looping system of the Primary Channels. And that’s the focus in the Ling Shu, which is that focus on Emotions, which are Interior causes. Just as we l ook at how the External penetrates to the Internal, we need to l ook at how the Internal moves out to the External . We have to invent now, a connection. Not j ust something that goes to the head, but goes to the head, and comes back ou t. Which very important because, by the time you get to the Jia Yi Ting, whi ch is seen as being a reorganization of Zhen Jing, that i s the Ling Shu . The /ia Yi f ing does something that i s very important, in terms of a textbook description . I t takes acupuncture Points and classi fies them based o n regions of the body. \Vhat are the Points of the head ? What are the Points of the chest? \'\That are the Points of the abdomen? What are the Points of the arms? What are the Points of the legs? \Vhat are the Points of the ears? They do an anatomi cal depiction of the Points, which is important when you are coming from a time period in whi ch eti ol ogy is based on Exogenous Pathol ogical Fa ctors which seem to foll ow an pathological process that i s anatomical . And with the /ia Yi Jing we begin to see the Point descripti ons become very detailed . The Ling Shu is still somewhat ambi guous. With the Jia Yi Jing, the writer of that had been exposed to the Shang Han Lun Traditi on, because he writes about the Slzang Han Lun Tradi tion . In this Tradition, when they talk about Yang pathology moving into the body, you are going to have Tai Yang, Shao Ym咚， Yang Ming. That means then, if I’m going to be l ooking anatomi call y, and what is challenging its Yang Qi, whi ch is a key word in the Su Wen as well as the Shang Han Lun, the Meridians have to be organized, speci fi cally nmv, has to begin with Du Mai, then it has to go to the Bladder Meri di an, the Gallbadder Meri dian, and the Stomach Meridian . There can’t be any way around that. It has to be Tai h晖， Shao Yang, Yang Ming, because that’s the Yang Qi movement. So when he i temized the Points on the head, he’s going to say the Points on the head have Governing Vessel, GV 24, that’s how he begins that discussion, moving into Bladder, BL 4, GB 1 5, Points like that, and ST 8. So basically, he’s not just givi ng you the Points. He’s saying, that’s the way it has to be. It has to be Tai Ya1号， Shao Ym叹， Yang Mi1 叹 ， becau s e we know ST 8 onl y has one Point on the head . It doesn't last on the head . We know, from St 8, it starts to move inward . From ST 8 Tou Wei thi口gs can no longer linger on the Exterior. It has to move into the Interi or. And that is preci sely what the Slzang Han Lwz was suggesting . Now all of those theories are giving you the basis of how they are going to i temize the Points. In most cases there were fewer Points in the old days, and more Points today. So the number of the Points, some of it is empirical and some of it is Numerology, but idea is that the di splacement of these Points has to be in thi s particul ar fashion : Tai Yang, Shao Yang, Yang Ming. And this has been the b asis of the anatomical theory, it travels from the legs, to the a口口s. In fact, those of you who know about the Root and Termination 出eory, in the L ing S h u , th ey only give y ou the Leg Channel s and then they go into the 64
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Terminations . In the Jia Yi Jing, at least in some editions of the Jia Yi Ji睬， they give you now the Leg and the Arm Channel s . So the general inference is that things begin at the Leg Channel s . Consider what is happening with rain. What we are seeing is something from Above is falling， 仕ying to move to som ewhere Below . So Below has to move Above to deal with that. The Leg Channels move Up to deal with these Exogenous Pathogeni c Factors that are trying to move Belmv . So it’ s coming and trying to deal with it as it is coming in. This is the context that we are looking at. And as you look at it from that perspective, you see the Pathogeni c Factor moving in, and the body trying to move it back out. So you have Tai Yang, Slzao Yang, Ya ng Ming of the a口ns . So moving in, we have Tai Yang, Small Intestine, Ting Go ng, SI -1 9; then Shao Yang, Triple Energizer, whi ch remember is more medial; and then Yang Ming, Large In testine . So again, i t’ s l i ke this notion o f things trying t o push things out, bu t when you can ’ t push things out, everything starts to come in. The Arm Channels represent where things become more severe, more serious. In other words, the Points that we see, once we put all the dots in, how we are going to determine what Meri dian 出ey belong to i s theoretical . I t is not what some peopl e might have suggested, that i t is meditati on . I meditate on it, and that’ s how the flow went. A lot of people would di spu te that and think that thi s i s much more pragmatic than that. I t’ s a theoreti cal aspect where they are seeing the movem ent of disease on the head, in thi s case . Now we can itemi ze the Points on the face . So thi s is the process. And certain Points we might even be abl e to debate that. Like SI-1 9, okay, I can understand this, but \vhat about SI- 1 8? That' s kind of pretty cl ose too. Maybe thi s should be a Shao Yang Point. Why should it be Tai Yang, unti l we start creating the tr司 ectory for Sm all Intestine and we link it up. Some people actu ally would dispute that SI- 1 8 is not a Tai Yang Poin t, but rather a S hao Ya ng Poi时， because Triple Heater i s m oving m ore inward . And, if we were to assume from the Classics, there is a saying that thi s is the cheekbone, which is the Master Bone. The cheekbone is the Master Bone. And, i f we look at that, the Meri di an that deals with bone in the Cl assics i s Gallbl adder. S o some people woul d say, yes, it should be Slino Yang, but not so much Triple Energizer, but G a llbl adder should be there . Thi s shou l d be a G a l l b l a dder Poi nt. A l ot of Points of Small Intestine tod ay u sed to be Gallbladder Points of the past. Not a lot, but a few Points used to be Gallbladder Points of the past. This idea of cheekbones being the Master bone, G allbl adder. What I mean by this i s in the Ling Slz u , as well as in the Jia Yi Jing, they have a statement about the Ya ng Meri dians controlling the different Humors of the bod y . For example, they say that Bladder controls the Sinews . So again, in an anatomical sense, because back then it was still a very anatomical approach. So if you have a disease hitting the Sinews, you go to the Bladder Meridian. If you are l ooking at Gallbladder, they say that G allbladder deals with the Bone. Stom ach deals with Blood . So the saying that Stomach control s Blood . Small Intestine deals with the Thi ck Fluids, the Ye. Triple Energizer deal s with Qi as the Humor and Large Intestine deals with the Thin Fluids, the Jin . What I am essentially saying is that what we have from the theory of Shang Han Lun, what we have from the theory about Roots and Terminati ons, becomes the precusor to the organizati on of Points on the b od y . Once you have it anatomical l y di spl aced, 65
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you can now connect all the Points together and come up with now a branch or the traj ectory of the Meri di ans. Thi s i s one a spect about th e hi stori cal devel opment of Acupuncture in terms of the Points. The location of the Points, basically follow Numerology. When you look at a number of Points in the s calp, it is going to be 1 .5 c u n lateral or 1 .5 c u n posteri or to one of the D u Poi nts . I t i s u sually not 1 c u n . So i t i s usually following that equation of 1 .5, because 1 .5 was a very popular measure that was u sed to look at Transportation. The Sim Points on the back are 1 .5 cu n lateral to Du Ma i. So everything is usually more in an odd number. It is 5 cun, it’ s 3 cu n, it’ s 1 .5 cu n . In some cases, you might have 2 cu n , but a lot of ti mes in the early descriptions of the Meridi ans, they usually begin in this aspect of 1 .5, because the idea of cw1 in the Meri dian language is that 1 cun was a m easure of Yin or Yang. So i f I’m going 1 .5 c w 1 , that means that rel ative to the l andmark that I am talking about, i t’ s going to be more Regul ating, becau se I have not compl eted the Yin and Ya ng cycl e . I’ve made it where it i s moving towards Yin or Ya ng, bu t Regulating . Depending on the way I angle i t, I am making it move towards maybe that 1 cu n or I’m m aking it move in closer to the end result at the other CUil .
That means, i f let’ s say this i s the l andmark, let’ s say this is D u Ma i . Du Mai is the Sea of Ya ng, so if thi s is Yang, 1 cun lateral to D u Mai woul d be Yin . Two cw1 lateral to Du Mai would be Ya ng. So if I went 1 .5 cu n or I angle the Needle towards Du Ma i, that means th at Point is going to have more of a Yin effect. If I am angling it tmvards 2 cu n , that Point is going to have more of a Yang
effect. For exampl e, the assumption here is if you are going to Needl e BL- 1 8 to Nourish Bl ood, that should be Needled 1 .5 cun, but obli quely towards that 1 c w 1 lateral to Du M町， becau se that would be the Yin measure. Is everyone following that? Du is Yang, so 1 c w 1 would be Yin, 2 cun would be Ya ng. So if I am trying to Nouri sh Bl ood, which is Yin, I would be Needling BL-1 8 towards Du Mai. If I’m trying to, let’ s say, Regul ate Damp Heat in the Liver, where you are trying to Disperse that, you mi ght consider okay, there’ s D amp Heat, so I want to get rid of that D ampness by making u se of the Heat to dry it up, but not obviously increasing the H eat, so you m i ght Needl e wi thou t very strong stimulati on towards, obliquely away from Du Mai as you are Needling BL- 1 8 . That would be thi s concept. And if you don’ t know what to do, then you might Needle somewhat perpendicularly, as some people might do. The idea here is the angle of the Needling also i s in rel a tionship to the l andmark. And everything in Acupuncture i s always in rel ati onship to a l andm ark. There’ s al w a y s a description of a l andmark, be i t the m all eolus, be it the knee, be i t the inguinal region, be it the navel, be if the xiphoid bone, be it the nipples, whatever it i s, it’ s always i n rel ationship t o a l andmark. That l andmark defines, is i t a l andmark of Yang or is i t a l andmark of Yin ? Which gives it a quality, the innate quality of the Point relative to the l andmark that it belongs to. That’ s the location of Acupuncture Points, ＇气rhich brings us to our l ast statement for today on Acupuncture, and that i s the Wu Wei. 66
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Question: Your description of this makes it sound like it i s a very mental process that they were engaged i n, rather than learning from palpation on the body and sensing energy that way. I wonder if you might comment on that. Answer: It comes from palpation. I mean the whole i dea that I talked about, the Resonance . It starts out wi th a a very palpati onal context. So it is from the Acupressure that it evolves into u sing stone probes, to really try to go deeper into some areas, or try to be more precise in the area that you are m anipulating. So the palpation is a precursor to all of these intellectu al theories . I’m just saying that while we can find a Point, the Meridian that it belongs to becom es more of an intell ectual process. Then, trying to give a descripti on that is accurate to \.vhere the location i s, that’s an intell ectual process, because there is no such thing as， ”Thi s is anatomically where the Point really i s l ocated . ” You really have to palpate that. But, the idea i s that when they wanted to create a location for the Point, they are u sing an i ntell ectu ali zation process that is rel ati ve to the l andmark rather than rel ative to palpation, becau se palpation is always going to be di fferent for each person. But it com es from palpation . Without the palpation, they \Voul dn’t have di scovered how m any Points there were on the scalp. That’ s not an intel lectu al process. You can ’t just do everything at 1 .5 cu 1 1, because some of them is not going to be that way. Any other questi ons? Question : I hope thi s is relevant. Could you talk a little bit about when you w ant to l oop energy . Let’ s say you wanted to use the Sinew Channel approach and use the Yang aspect of the Spl een Ascending up the l eft side of the body . H ow theoreti cally would you talk about Looping energy when you were talking about the Divergent Channels, then we talked about it again when you talked abou t the Sinew Channels about why and how to use that Looping techni que. Answer: The Looping techni que is almost like this notion that we have here. It comes from thi s idea that when ever you are l ooking at energy th at is moving out from a pathology point of view, then it moves in. So likewi se, if we are Needling in the same fashi on, we should be thinking that anything that we are Needli ng on one side, where we might be thinking of it going towards the head, and then, like this, going away from the head on the opposite side. So the Looping theory really is an extension of the idea that that which goes in must come ou t, and that whi ch is going lateral mu st be going medial as wel l . So that’ s where that Looping concept comes in. Now the reason why i t seems to be more dominant, as you can see with the Divergent or even the Tendino-Muscular Channel s, i s because, as w e see with thi s theory, that it suggests that with the Yang Meridi ans or with Yang Qi, whi ch can include Wei Qi, this idea of things moving in and out is very, very important in that context. Questi on : Put i t i口 a practical context. Like say you have someone who has an Accumulation somewhere in their body and you di scern at whi ch Channel would most immedi ately access that Blockage, and then decide where you w ant to move it. If i ts origin is from the Exterior, you woul d want to move it back out towards the Exterior, but if it was Endogenousl y produced then you are going to want to just break it up and not necessarily want to move it. 67
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Answer: Well, breaking it up i s moving it. First of all, getting back to that question in your example, based on what we’ve stu died at this point, the idea is that any affliction that one has is an anatomical affliction . That i s, it coul d be an Exogenous Factor. Exogenous Factors are basi cally are going to move from the limbs into the head . And then, if it is not Resolved, as we see with the theory from the Su Wen , it can travel into the chest, into the abdomen, and then enter into the Za11g Fu . 飞rVhat you have is Za11g Wind condition or Za11g Col d condition. So it is already an anatomi cal concept. Depending on, at what point do you get to the pathology, and the stage, the progression of it, that’ s going to be where it determines where you are going to Needle first. The theory with Wind i s you Needle where it has gone to and you find and Needle its way back out. Let’ s assume that thi s i s indeed a Zang Wind condition . They might start Needling at the Bladder Slz u Point that rel ates to that particul ar afflicted Za11g and then move from there, if it is Wind, you expect there is going to be some Bowel symptoms, because it is moving back ou t. From the bowel s it is going to move into the chest, and subsequently, it has to come out through the head, or through the fingers in its Rel ease. So that would be an anatomi cal concept. Now, in terms of Looping, there are two answers to that. One answer i s, remember the Chinese beli eve that the Meridians are first one-sided, and that it’ s Collateral is on the opposite si de. That’ s the Nan Jing description . S o that a s you are Needling the Meridian, what you are going to have is the possibility that it'll move to its Col l a teral on the opposite side, which gives birth to a Looping concept already, that I shoul d treat the opposite si de to get ri d of it. As I’m moving it out of thi s Meri dian, it might move to the Coll ateral . The second aspect is the noti on that if you are going to Needle something that is moving in, as you are trying to move it back out, you have to l ook at the fact that before it comes out, you have to Needle the areas where it can go in. And where it can go in, i s anatomically, not just left and right. It can also be above and below. So that can also create this i dea of a Looping system, or what they would call Contra l ateral Needl ing. And wi th Contra-lateral Needling, i t’ s described primarily just in the Su Wen . The Ling Shu describes Needling Points on the opposite side, but i t’ s not really Contra-lateral Needling that they really specifically describe. It’ s Chapter 63 of the S u Wen that talks about Contra-l ateral Needling. That chapter is on the Di vergent Channels or, I shoul dn’ t say on the Divergent Channel s, i t’s the chapter on the Grandchild Luo, Sun Luo, where they describe these Sun Luos as pathology that can move to the opposite side. So again, the idea of Collaterals moving pathology from one side to the other.
4.
队！u 1八lei
&
Hi s Influence
I guess we can end with Wu Wei. We only have mentions of hi s work. We don’t have any surviving texts that are associated with Wu Wei. He i s a clini ci an who l ived during the Ha n Dynasty . What Wu Wei brings to the discussion of Acupuncture is, bringing thi s into the summation. When you are Needling, it i s important that you l ook a t the depth o f the Needle . S o far we just talked about the angl e, the direction, up and down, the locati on. But he says the depth of the 68
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Needling i s also very, very important. For exampl e, he states that any Point that is l ocated below the knee should go to a depth of about 5 c u n , for it to be effective. Any Point l ocated below the knee, 5 c un . Now remember, thi s is a cu n (width o f hi s thumb) . S o don’t m i x that u p with 5 inches. Two nm , for me, just add another one, 3 cwz, another one, 4 cwz, 5 nm . It’ s still rel atively deep, but it is not equivalent necessarily to 5 inches, because your thumb i s not necessarily one inch. It just makes people think that there is a depth of efficacy in Acupuncture. He al so states that when you Needle a Point, you have to wait until it takes you that amount of tim e to cook one Sheng of grains. One Sheng 升 is equal to 1 0 Liang (Liang = 30 gram ) . So 300 gram s would be abou t the equivalent for ri ce, let’ s say. So that generall y refers to how the Chinese usually measure that in modern days. You take a can of soup and you save that can. One Sheng is one can-full of that. So for you to cook one Sheng of rice usually takes about on the average about 30 minu te s . So now he i s saying that Acupuncture is also about keeping the N eedle in for a certain duration of ti me. This is important, because if you consider the Nine N eedles, you are l ancing, you are cutting, you are draining . You are not going to leave the Needle in. He is basically describing what some people woul d consi der Long Needles and that you are u sing these Long Needles for a certain duration of time for it to be effective. If we look back and w e l ook at the Leg Channel s, why wou l d you even use Points on the Leg Ch annel ? Leg Channel s generall y are things that involve Yin pathol ogy . D ampness would be an example of that. Col d woul d be an exampl e of that. These are more common kinds of pathology for whi ch we would u se these Points below the knee. N ow again, I don’ t mean Points below the ankle. That’ s just one anatomi cal landmark that I just mentioned . So I am not saying that you go 5 c u n at LV-3. That’ s not what we are referring to. But, the context of this i s that he i s saying that the depth of Needling i s important and the time, the duration i s important, which becomes another avenue that begins to get incorporated in acupuncture textbooks after Wu Wei. Prior to th at, we don’t see 出at being menti oned i n the Ling Sh u . The Ling S h u doesn' t tell you to Needle this for 30 minutes or for the time it takes one Sheng of ri ce to cook. The L ing Sim doesn't mention N eedling thi s m any cu 1 z . The Jia Yi Jing does, but the Jia Y i Jing comes after 队fu Wei. So 队fu ＼八lei i s now
influ ential in terms of telling us that for certain Points to be effective, we have to go down to a certain depth of Needling. So when we go to the Jia Yi Jing, written by Huang Fu Mi as the devel oper of that, we are going to integrate some of thi s information al l together, so that the Jia Yi Jing becomes easier to understand . What is the basis o n which h e writes this book, which includes already we talked about, the anatomi cal aspect, linking all the Points together, creating a tr句ectory, incl uding into it the connection to the Organs, the l ocation of the Points relative to l andmarks, the angling depth of the Points, how many Cones of Moxibusti on you use. All of that i s in the Jia Yi Jing that we don’t see i n the Ling Shu. Bu t we see how all of that develops for him to be able to make that type of association .
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So are there any qu esti ons before we end for today? Well, thank you and have a good evening and we will see you tomorrow.
7 March 2004 Question: When you were talking about the Ung and the Shen, I missed that part, I guess the signi fi cance of when you were talking about the rain. Was it that it was the way peopl e on the earth connected to the Spirit because the Yin was going up and then returning? Answer: Well, first of all, when you consider rain, rain is very important in an agri cul tural soci ety like in China. And one of the most common consul tations that you might engage in with a Shaman, or a Wu, would be real l y abou t your crops and why you are not getting the proper rainfall . So the rain is often very m u ch associated with Shamanistic practices. The other aspect was that when you look at rain, the Chinese also believe that rain was due to thi s condensation. So it is al most very scientifi c, that they see the Sun and as the Sun’ s Celesti al Qi gets absorbed by the earth, the Earth Qi begins to take the Yin aspect and the Yin aspect of the Earth Qi begins to rise. So as that Yang engages wi th the Yin, and thi s is where there is that di chotomy between Heaven as being Yang and Earth as being Yin . It’ s very di fferent from the animal aspect that we talked abou t yesterd ay. It’s more like the i dea of just in relationships to the Earth itself and the Yang Qi that we absorb through our hands. So in this context, when the Yang Qi begins to cause the Yin Qi to rise up, what you are going to have now in that aspect of it ri sing up i s the creation of rain. So again, this idea of rain coming from thi s cond ensati on process that we see and as the rain begins to fall, this noti on of it returning back to the Earth. So again, the i dea of a Soul i s something that goes into the Earth, its Spirit l eaves the Earth like the condensation process that we see as it tries to ri se up toward Heaven and what we are trying to do with Shamanistic practi ces i s to bring it back down to Earth, like rain comes down . And when they come b ack down to Earth, they com e back to Earth as this very Yin type of quality . They tend to be more Y巾， as we would think of it in rel ationship to the Po . So that’ s that i dea . Then, in beh-veen those, you have the Three Orifices . 飞机th the Three Orifices you also see how the Chinese are highly into the trinity concept. It is almost like the term that they use, Pin . With the three squares, the three mouths, it is basically is the same word that you use in the Ben Cao . They say, thi s is a口 Upper Grade herb, a Middle Grade herb or a Lower Grade herb . It’ s the same character, but those three characters also mean the Three Orifices, and those Three Ori fi ces are the areas that traditionally we see where the Soul leaves through the nose, through the mouth and through the rectum . Iha t’ s why I said it was common practice in the old days to insert j ade into the mou th and into the rectum regi on of the bod y . The nose is not as common, because the nostrils are sm all . That’ s the only reason why you don’ t see that as much in practi ce .
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Questi on : Thank you . I have another question . When you were talking about Wind and at some point you said that the aspect of Wind was about change and that disease was also caused by resistance to change, did I hear you correctly ? Answer: Right. In other words, we know from the S u Wen that the basic theory is that 飞Nind is the ” cause of hundreds of diseases ” . And that ’ s presented in Chapter 3 of the Su Wen . But in Chapter 1, the basic emphasis, and we see that in most of the early wri tings, is on Ya ng Slzeng. Yang Sheng means to nurture life. That al so means preventive m edi cine. The idea here i s that you only reall y become ill when you are n o t engaging in preventive measures o r if you are not ad apting to the changes that occur. Again, very important to an agricultural society is to be abl e to observe the changes in the Wind and how thi ngs are moving and then in that case, they are able to also predict the seasons that are going to be presenting them selves. So to them, the interpretation of Wind is not just a physical interpretation, it is al so a metaphorical interpretation that Wind i s about inducing changes a n d that i f one is not abl e t o change, thi s i s w h y w e become ill, because part o f the Daois t thinking i s that everything i s relative, so there is no such thing as Perverse l叩i nd, but rather it’s the idea that we are not abl e to adapt and to move with the Wind . So what we really have is a form of Counter-flow Qi, or Ni Qi, or Rebelliou s Qi. Then there is the infl uence of Confuci anist scholars at the same tim e, being pu t into thi s, and again, I don’t want to suggest that Confuci anism and Dao is m are opposed to each other . A lot of times, especially even within the Chi nese cul ture, they see them as complements to each other, that everythi ng that Confucianists don ’ t engage in, the Daois ts engage in, and vice versa. So to the Confucianists, they do however see that thi s is something that is Perverse, that the season is out of synchroni city with humanity, that w e have drou ght because there is something wrong with the seasons rather than wrong with us. \Ne are doing everythi ng to appease Heaven and yet Heaven i s not all owing us to have the benefi ts of that. So as a result, what must be causing that is some type of Perverse Qi. Again, it’ s like the creation of a devil with a God . You don’t pu t it in Heaven’ s context unless you consi der it a s a punishmen t, ,,v hi ch the Legal i sts woul d have; that would be a form of punishment. That’ s why we are having a drou ght, and the reason why is that some people must be doing wrong things, so ,..., e have to bring that back into Order. But to the Confuci anists, they woul d say, no, there is some type of Perversity that is taking pl ace and the Perversi ty is because we have lost our m oral standards, our m oral au thority, whi ch is why Mencius thinks of the whole idea of Qi as this concept where we are 甘ying to be in synchroni city with the Mandates of Heaven . A follow-up to him is Sun Zi who says that is going back to the Source of all things. So what they were really saying here is that we l ost the moral au thority and as a resu lt, we have allowed this Perverse Q i to take place. That’ s why i t is not reall y in conflict with Dao is t ideas, but there is a moral aspect. That means tha t we allowed the Perversi ty to take place in our lives, which means that we are a receptive host, the i dea of Guest and Host Qi that is also very common in the Su 讯1en . 71
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Okay, so yesterday w e began our di scu ssion about the evol u ti on of acupuncture, at l east based on Classical writings. 飞气Te saw that in Cl assical wri tings, the emphasi s, first and foremost, was on Moxibustion. And the actu al texts that we found, at least the earliest texts that we found, basically suggest just the word Jiu, whi ch means Moxa, and then we began to look at the development of these Needles or these instru ments that were u sed on the physical body. These instrumen ts, at least archeol ogical findings of these instruments, include both dull instruments and sharp ins甘uments . The suggestion has been that these dull instruments haven’ t been dulled because of time, because a lot of times, these were simpl y buri e d . So what they found was that som e of these instrum ents were probabl y u sed to probe, to massage, to affect a cupuncture Points and these sharper instruments were used to ul cerate, to lance, to in some cases, cu t, and allow certain Points or certain areas of the body to drain . The evol u ti on of it into metal Needl es, obvi ously, coul d only occur after the Chinese learn to work iron, unless we do believe that there were bronze Needles, which some people have suggested might have occurred, because the SJzang Dynasty is the Age of Bronze. Yet we have not been abl e to find any bronze Needles yet. So there is nothing to suggest that acupuncture Needles in the form of a bronze Needle were being used during the SJzang Dynasty . We do know that there are a lot of these vessel s that were discovered during the S h a ng Dynasty, these bronze vessel s . The reason why we have a lot of them being discovered is because anti que collecting began in the Song Dynasty . Prior to the Song D ynasty, we don’t really have descriptions. M anu als dating back to the Song Dynasty are peopl e’ s coll ections of bronzes dating back to early periods. So it is only in the Song Dynasty that we reall y see antique coll ecting, at least people documenting their collecti on and what they have and writing abou t it and all that. So that even w hen we l ook at these so-called textbooks or m anu als or j ournals of peopl e’s collections and they are going to be people that collect medical artifacts but we don’t see any mention of Needles that are made from bronze. So again, that’ s a big gap 出ere. ',Ye do know that during the SJzang Dynasty, that there is indeed these stone Needles that were still being u sed, but we don’t really have suggestions that they were using bronze Needl es. And so far, what we have in terms of evi dence i s, indeed, iron Needl es, gold Needles and silver Needles. The basic context here is that when you l ook at Chapter 1 of the Ling Shu, whi ch itemizes the Nine Needles, and it is the chapter on the Nine Needles, is that they were using the Needles primarily for l ancing, for cutting, which suggests thi s i dea of Blood-l etti ng . V ery often, especi a l l y when you rea d the L i n g S h u , the recommendation is Bl ood-l etting Points. So again, we see this idea of bringing the blood out. Thi s would m ake sense if we think of the Ling Sim as the textbook on trying to redi scover the Shen, because the Shen i s contained in the Bl ood . P art of Blood-letting is to Release the Spirit, or the Perverse Spirit that has, in some ways, conta minated the Bl ood . So we have the Nine Needles, and we don’ t reall y see these Nine Needles being used in a fo口口 that we only are selecting one type of Needl e . As I said, the Fi l l i form Needle onl y begins to become 72
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standardized during the Song Dynasty, during the 1 1 th to 1 2th Century A . C E . So it is only b y that time, that they are using acupuncture as we know o f it today, where \Ve are onl y u sing one type of Needl e, even though the si zes of these Needles would be substantially much greater in terms of gauge than what we use tod ay . When we go into the Song Dynasty, we will see why they began to standardize just one Needle, and why these so-called Nine Needles became more obsolete, even thou gh there is a trend in China now to try to bring back the Nine Needles of thi s Chapter 1 in the Ling Slz u . We try t o talk a l s o abou t the acupuncture Points . W e s a i d tha t a cupun cture Poin ts essenti a l l y have two theori e s . One theory i s that i t i s developed through a process of cultivation. That is, people essentially engage i n a form o f meditation and a s they were Yang Shen, as 出ey were becoming hermits and as they were beginning to meditate and vi sualize the energetic pathways of the body, they began to discover within themselves the fl ow of these Meri d i ans. That’ s one approach . Of course, that approach to some degree, one woul d say you cannot real l y reprodu ce i t in another person, because not everyone is cul tivating, not everyone has the ability to do very good visualization. So thi s, obviously, is going to present problem s to some people who are more, let’s say, hands-on . So the other aspect i s tha t when you l ook at acupunctu re, people essenti al l y l ooked a t acupuncture as being devel oped through a palpati onal aspect. That it’ s not som ething that you visualize. Yes, we have an image that we can l ook at, bu t rather, you palpated the body and you find these sets of Points. And through palpating the body and finding these sets of Points, you begin to di scover that these Points might have an inter-correlation, whi ch for the Chinese was not very hard, because, remember, part of the philosophy already i s that everything is i nter-related. S o t o them, it’ s n o t going t o b e an isolated event. An d, as they begin the process of connecting the dots, as some people v.roul d call that, we have these pathways being created . Again, even though they have created pathways, the probl em with i t i s that i f you are coming from a hi stori cal poi nt of view, the traj ectori es have changed over the centuries. They don’t really have the same dimensi ons that we think of today. For exampl e, if you think of the Bladder Meri di an, j u st going back to the theory of Roots and Terminations. All the earl y Meridi an depi cti ons begin at the extremities and then they conform by traveling from the Earth, Leg Channel s, up toward Heaven to the head . Thi s i s again the Ya ng of the legs moving up to the most Yang, which i s the head . And i f 出at theory is correct as the Ling Shu or any of the texts, the Jia Yi Jing, would propose in terms of Roots and Terminations, we would say that the Blad der Meri dian begins at BL-67, at the little toe. But if you read some of the findings that we see in Ma Wang D1汀， where you see that they have these eleven _ Channels being described, they actu al l y, for the B l a d der Meri d i an, have i t beginning at the depre s s i on underneath the l ateral malleolus, suggesting that i t begins somewhere around what we might think of today as BL-62, or m aybe even l ower than that, any of the Bladder Points that surround the l ower p art of the l a teral malleolus . The 73
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commonality is that it i s still beginning at the extremiti es and traveling up. Then they’11 say that from the lateral m alleolus, it travels to the popliteal crease, to the center of the popliteal crease, BL-40. They are not reall y describing any Points along the way. So it is more of just the general flow, which indi cates to people that what you might have been doing then was palpating from the depression underneath the l ateral malleolus upward into the middle of the knees, because the y are not really describing a Point per se. They really are describing more of a reg1 0n. The common aspect that we see is that they are going to be describing m aj or l andm arks, be it the ankle bone, be i t behind the knees and then, furthermore, it goes up into the gluteus or into the pubic bone, as in some other Meridians, into the borders of the ribs or underneath the sternum, or underneath the clavi cle or a dja cent to the scapul a . These are all l andmarks that they are describing. So they are almost looking at the body like a topography and really trying to understand what that topography means. And, if there is such a 出ing, that the body i s the mi crocosm of the m acrocosm, then w e are going to assume that the body should have the same type of terrain as the macrocosm, whi ch to the Chinese Empire is relatively limited . That’ s their m acrocosm, not really the entire w orl d . So for example, they would say that the body has nine peaks, and there are three water sources that we have in China: what they call the Yang Z i River, the Yellow River, of course i s the most popular one because that’ s where the civilization associated with the Chinese begins, and then you have what i s called the West Ri ver. Those are the three b i g rivers of China a t the time o f i ts early empire. If we just take a look at this pi cture of China and its early empire, (eastern, central China) we are real ly j u st thinking of thi s period all the way to the Han Dynasty . Once you get into the Ha n Dynasty, they begin to start going dmvnward . They begi n to go all the way down to Vietnam . So even these places that are no l onger part of China, were part of China at one time. But this is the period that we are l ooking at right now, in terms of earl y Chinese Medicine. All of thi s is where things are beginning from . Some of the m ajor capitals that we see . Luo Yang was a m ajor capital . Xia n Yang is another capital . Clzang A n would be considered the most important capital of early China, which today, you know as Xi A n . 叭That happened was that the civilization begins in this area and then they begin moving west. As they begin to move west, as in Xi A n, the whole idea i s that A n means peace . As we m ove there, we are going to establish peace, the \'Vestern Peace capi tal . In the old days, we actually called it Clzang An， ”May our peace l ast for a l ong time." Clzang means long . Then what you have is the idea of the Western Ha n and then later on they are going to go and move back this way into the Eastern Han, where Luo Yang becomes established as the capital . So this is the movement centered m ostly around this area . Again, eventually we are going to see migrati on going up, because they are going to go and try to deal with these nomadic tribes that are always invading China. In the Western Ha n Dynasty, they keep these tribes under control to some degree. Later on these tribes are going to come down again attack the Chinese civilization during the Song Dynasty establishing the Jin Yuan Period . 74
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But thi s is the context that we are seeing if you are looking at this terrain; there are nine mountains, the Nine Peaks . That’ s very common in Chinese, to l ook for Nine Peaks . They thi nk of the dragon as having Nine Peaks, just like Hong Kong i s consi dered the Island of the Nine Peaks, Kow Loon, as some of you know, the i d ea of the Nine Dragons. That means that anatomicall y, we should see that there should be Nine Peaks in the human body as wel l . So you know where some of these peaks are. These are going to be the l andmarks of the bod y . One big peak that always stands out is the ankl e bone . That’ s a li ttle mountain that we have. That’ s a ”li忧le knob”， which i s actually the term that we give to it. It’ s a littl e bone that i s sti cking out. If one was to lie down and you just l ook at one of the things that is pro甘uding . So if I am just lying down flat, the areas that are protru ding are going to be the breasts, you have two peaks here, and the head or the chin. Some peopl e just l ook at the face as being an area where you can l ook at the Nine Mountains. But the chin, the breasts, and the knees would be areas that are protruding, and you have the lateral m alleolus that is protruding . So these are the mountains. So if I flip the person over, the area that is going to be pro甘uding is the gluteus . These are kind of like their images of the mountains. Of course the area of the upper back, if you are l ying fl at, your upper back is protru ding. So those are the Nine Mountains: the ankl e bones, the gluteus, the scapu l a regi on, the breast region, and the head or the chin in particular are the Nine Mountains. So that to them i s a microcosm and what they are going to be focusing on are these pathways or rivers that flow through these areas of the mi crocosm . Some of these are very obvious . We can see the nostril, where fluid com es ou t and flows down this mountai n that we call the chin. The breasts 've see throu gh the process of l actation, where again, fluid comes out of the mountain. It springs out of the mountains, per se. And in the gluteu s, we could think of the urinary as well as defecation . Again, this flui d that i s coming out through these areas. Then of course there are mountains that do not have '"' ater sources. That includes the lateral malleol u s and that i s why the greater focus is on the malleolus, per se. And if you are not focusing on the knees, then they will be focu sing on the scapul a . There are discrepancies, as betw een the knees and the scapul a . Some people would just focus on the knees as the major m ountain. Others would say the scapula. So these are more of the desert like mountains . They are m ore like a desert terrai n . Again, we have desert terrains in China as wel l . Part of it is very sandy. This i s one other aspect that what we are seeing from the development of acupuncture: the notion that we could reall y l ook at the body as a mi crocosm of the macrocosm, from the perspective of how the Chinese saw their empire at that time. There are three water sources. That means that there are three condui ts that bring fluid into the body, or that flows through the body . And these three water sources represent the three l evels of energy flow in the body, be it the Wei level, the Ying level, or the Yuan level . Those are the three conduits that we see. And given that we are l ooking at the beginning of the empire, where the source is prim arily coming from the Yel low River, the Yellow Ri ver then would be associated with Post-Natal Q i . In other words, not Pre-Natal, but Post-N atal, becau se that’ s what sustains the empire. That sustains the empire and that
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woul d then be considered the l evel of Yin g Qi and we can definitely see where Ying Qi is put under the auspi ce Yellow River, also in rel ationship to the Spleen and Stomach . Whereas, when you get into the Yang Zi 阳ver, that m eans as you begin to move more South, the Yang Zi River is going to be more associated with warm th . It’ s going to be m ore associ ated with thi s Wei Q i concept. To the Chinese, the West River is consi dered to be mu ch more m ysterious. A l ot of times, if you want to go somewhere that is mysterious, you head towards the West. Lao Zi rode his water buffalo toward the West. Buddhi sm, their paradi se is in the West. So the West River is associated with thi s area of the unknown, this area of death, thi s area of retreat, this area of paradi se, and that of course is where the Yua n Level would be seen as. So again, these are the im ages that we see in the Chinese mythology. And consequently, it is going to have an impact on the devel opment of Chinese Medicine. VVe al so sai d that i f we l ook at the location of acupuncture Points, that it is very easy to palpate and find Points, then the questi on is, which Meridian do we put them in? Do they belong to this Meridian, that Meridian? That’s an ongoing process of development in Chinese Medical history . What I have suggested to you is that their displ acement of Points on the Meridian is theoretical, rather than intu i tive. Yes, there is that intuitive aspect of meditation, seeing \·vhere things connect, but you still have to categorize it. You sti l l have to put a name on it. Once you start putting a name on it, the naming becomes a process of, in many ways, not only categorizing, bu t also theoreticall y developing an understanding of the Meridians. The notion was that the Classics must have a major impact on thi s . If not, the development of the Meridi ans first must then have caused the devel opment of the theory that things move from Tai Yang to Slzao Yang to Yang M ing, as we saw on these Meri dians on the head. Needless to say, we have the same theory, even on the chest you have Tai Yang, Shao Yang, Yang Ming. Then it comes in, where you have Tai Yang, Sliao Yang, Yang Ming . Now you look at this region of the chest. The region of the chest, remember, w ould be the area where you have Ta i Ya ng, Jue Yin, and Shao Yin . Becau se remember, one of the big discrepancies that we see iη acupuncture i s Shao Yin and Jue Yin . If you read the Su Wen and they go into the stages, it is common that you will see Slzao Yin as the l ast stage. That is the end, we should be retun1ing back to our source, Heart and Ki dneys . Others would say, no, at the end, what we return back to are the things that we have not been abl e to release in our life, the notion of Karma . The problem that we see in Chinese Medicine is the debate between the rol e of the Heart and the Peri cardium . This is endemic, where one might say that the Heart is the Soverei gn Fire and the Peri cardium is the Mini steri al Fire. Of course, this is going to be di sputed in l ater generations. The \vhol e notion here, is that the Heart, like in the empire, is the Emperor or the Empress . What the Heart is seeking to achieve is a form of conquest. It is out on a quest. All of us h ere have a Curriculum. You can call it the 33 Heavens or what have you, that we talked about yesterday morning . When the quest has come to its completion and you have been abl e to understand your Curri culum and graduate from your Curri culum, then you have reached the end of your life, or you have reached the point where your life purpose has been satisfied. That’ s the Heart. This is the 76
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character for the Heart 心 . In the old days, it is just wri tten like this . Here is the Shen . It is like thi s. Again, this imagery of the Heart as being a receptacle, but i t’ s a receptacle that again has flow coming into i t . It i s a receptacle, so thi s is said to be one flow (from the left), second flow (from the right) and then the third flow coming ou t (at the bottom . Just think of a receptacle. Here is a receptacl e and then you have a flow coming into this receptacle and another flow coming into i t, three ri vers, Wei Qi, Ying Qi, Yuan Qi, if you want to pu t it in that context. And then, ou t of the receptacle, something drains ou t. Again, you can see this image has almost a phallic like, symbolic component to it as well . The relati onship between Kidneys and the Heart. If you look at this, the i dea here is that basically what it says is that you are like a receptacle. You are a container and you have constant im ages, constant flow coming into this container from the outsi de, from the inside, and how you are able to bring this Essence from Post-Natal Qi, Acquired Essence, is going to d etermine how compl ete thi s receptacle i s . And if that receptacle is not complete, then it i s going to overflow . It is going to leak out. This is the notion of the Luo Channel s, Empty and Ful l . Again, this whole imagery of receptacles that we have in the bod y . So what it says is that the Heart is responsible for controlling, governing thi s flow, governing Blood, as we would like to later on describe in terms of the role of the Heart. So this is the image that we have of the Heart. And then, thi s is the eleven Channels that we talked about in Classi cal wri tings, that we only see eleven Channels, because l ater on what gets invented is thi s notion of a Pericardiu m . What happens is the Peri cardium replaces what we call the Heart, and the Heart, in its invention becomes the Heart Channel . In other words, the original Heart Meridian is the Meri dian that we know of today as the Peri cardium Meri d i a n . That was ori ginally referred to as the Heart Meridian. By the time we move into the Ling Shu, as well as the Su Wen, which are now depicting 1 2 Meri di ans, we are now going to see that the Meri di an that originall y was referred to as the Heart Meri di an, is now called Xin Bao, the Heart Wrap or the Heart Protector as sometimes we refer to it. And, there’s this new traj ectory that we see bei ng described, that we now know of in m o d ern acupuncture as the Heart M eridi an. That is in the Ling Sh u . The L i n g Slzu speci fi cally tell s us that i f you are l ooking at the Heart Meridian, i t is used for pain along i ts trajectory. It means there was reall y no use of the Heart Channel i ni ti ally, except using it for p ain along i ts trajectory . Later on we know that began to change. In parti cular, the Ling Shu actually tells you that you shoul d be u sing Shen Men, HT-7 for pain along its traj ectory . The Heart Meri dian that we know of today was pri m arily used for p ain along the Heart Channel, angina pain. That’ s when you would use it. The notion here i s philosophi cal . That i s, at one time the belief is that you have External, Internal movements coming into this receptacl e of your body and if that receptacle becomes full, it i s going to begin to empty. It i s going to overflow, just like the fl oods . If the banks are not able to support it, what you are going to have is flooding . It is going to have overflow . And as we know, in the 77
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Classics, the Nan Jing in particular, says that whenever you have flooding, there are reservoirs that will take on this flooding . And, those reservoi rs, they say, were the Extraordinary Vessels, the idea that the Consti tutional level will absorb excess flooding, or the Ki dneys will absorb thi s excess flooding i n the Heart: Ki dney / Heart communi cation, which later on we would say is irrigated by San Jiao, the Triple Heater invention . Again, that’s all Nan Jing associations. But getting back to our earlier discussion from yesterday morning, that’ s what w e were saying, tha t what you have are Cu rri culum s in l i fe . The Curri culums represent the questions, the quest that you are on. You can have Curri cul u m s th at can rel ate to weal th, rel ate to heal th, rel ate to prosperi ty, whatever it i s, there’s a Curri culum . And the belief here is that when you graduate from this Curriculum, thi s receptacle begins to get buried, and it moves into the Earth, or it moves back to the source where this receptacle comes from . And the myths say that it com es from Water. So again, thi s rel ationship between Heart and the Kidneys is established al so by the mythologi cal noti on that everything originates from Water. Remember, we said that Chaos creates Water, and \'\later creates the hvo opposing forces that later on we call Yin and Yang, the notion of the Kidneys giving birth to Yin and Yang. So, the whole notion here is that what created the Water i n the first place was Chaos. That means what we are saying i s that not onl y do you have a Curri culum that returns back to the Earth, but maybe what you have is a Curri culum that was very chaoti c. You took something way in advance and you didn’ t know how to handle it, so you created a lot of disorder, Chaos, in your life, Luan 乱 ， confusion. Again, this i s a term that is used a l ot i n Chinese Medi cine, especi ally in the L ing Sh u . There was a lot of confu sion, chaotic Qi, Lz-wn, in your life, so that this Luan, this Chaos in your life that you were not able to handle requires something to try to bring it i nto Order. What is the ordering component of Chaos? Chaos moving into Order creates now, The Peri cardium . Thi s notion of trying to keep thi s vessel from exploding, keep thi s vessel from becoming Dian Kuang, m adness and insanity . So I feel th e confusi on, I feel the Chaos, I feel the Luan. The Cl assics would say if that is not controll ed, you are going to have Dian Kuang, this term that means madness and insanity, or sometimes translated as mania-withdrawal . You are going to have severe Shen disturbances. So what you need to do is you need to have something to keep that vessel intact, something to protect it. We now start to invent this notion of a Heart Protector. The Heart Protector brings Order. Chaos becomes Order and Order is what creates Water. The Pericardium must be rel ated somehow back to Ki dneys. The only way we can develop that imagery of Peri cardi um relating back to Kidney is somehow it has to be paired off with something that rel ates to the Kidneys, or pair it wi th something that already existed . San Jiao existed before Pericardium . So now we see that i t is connected to San ]iao. So thi s is the whole evolu tion that we see with acupunc切re and i ts development of this Pericardium Channel, whi ch as I said, l ater on people are going to say that really what you need to resolve to keep the empire intact i s the Peri cardiu m, and not the Heart. So later generati ons are going to say that the Peri cardi um is the Soverei gn Fire and the H eart is the Mini sterial Fire. That is going to be where the philosophical debate takes place. But that is going to be at another time when we get to that period . 78
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VVhen we are looking at the development of the Meridians, you see that there is that theoreti cal aspect and the whole debate that I talked about, that we see in the Classi cal wri ting, with the question being : i s S im o Yin l ast in the sequence, or is Jue Yin the l a st? So the debate goes . ”No, Jue Yin should be last.” J u e Yin should be l ast i f we are going to fol low the i m agery that what you u l timately need to resol ve i s your Heart Protector. Then people are going to have discomfort with the Ki dney Meri dian being so close to Ren M町， back to the Source, Ren, instead of the Pericardium Meri dian. Remember, the i dea of Jue Y巾， or the Liver Meri dian . Because so far what we have is Tai Yin, Lung, Spleen, then you have Jue Yin, Peri cardium, Liver, and then you start moving to Shao Yin . Of course, the distracti on for Shao Y巾， Kidneys is that the Heart i s all the way out here (pointing to the Heart channel beginning under the arm) . That’s the big distraction. So again, thi s reminder that the Heart is really abou t something that is trying to come out, somethin g that is trying to break away. The Spirit trying to break away, woul d be another analysi s of that. Ultimatel y, when it overflows, what should be coming out i s the Spirit. We can also say， ”Yes, but the Spirit is out of control . Th at’ s why you have m ani a and with draw al . ” Som e people would say that’s pathological rather than physiological, the graduation, the levitation of the Spirit away from the physical body, from the Blood . So the location of Poi nts was frequently a refl ection of the concepts of how they divide the Yin and the Yang . That’ s the division of Yin and Yang. Then we talked about Wu Wei. We said he basically added in the importance of location, the importance of Needling d epth and now actu al l y waiting. Don ’ t take the Needle out so qui ckly. You might need to l ance, insert the Needl e in, but you might need to wait before you actu all y pull that Needle out and get the bl ood to come out. So there i s actually a time period. Generally, the p arallel i s with cooking, how l ong it takes you to cook this, how l ong it takes you to cook that. Obvi ously, that could be rel ativel y debatabl e, depending on how s廿ong the Fire i s, certain things \Vill cook slowly or rapi dly. Question : I expect we'll talk abou t i t in a lot more detail later, but it raises a question with regard to the Primary Meridi ans, when di d the understanding of the Primary Meri dians as a continuum, actually take place? Answer: Well, we don’ t know exactly when that takes place. We know that the Pri m ary Meridians as a Conti nuum only appears, already appears, in the Ling S h u . So that means in the Nei Jing, already we know there is this imagery of trying to get all of thi s to be interconnected, rather than see the Meridians as fragmented segments of the Channel system . So the notion of the Meridi ans coming together as a Continuum i s not obviously associ ated with one person . It is reall y just associated with the Nei Jing. Then, what people have done to try to develop a commentary on that i s to say, in other words, that becomes part of the philosophical process that we see. So far, what we have is two theories or two images of the Channels. The one theory, the older theory woul d be that the Meridians are all, I guess I was 79
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going to use the w ord fragmented, but maybe that is not a very good w ord . They are all segments . They are not a continuu m . They are all segments. They are all segments that appear to begin at the extremi ties. So, we can even dispute the Root and Node theory, or the Root and Termination theory. They begin at the extremi ti es and they terminate, they fie 结 ， is the term, they clump, they bind, they terminate. These are different translations of these word s . This term could be u sed to indi catae pathology . When they say "clumping of Qi＇’， some of you have probably heard that term . That is the w ord fie . When they say the Pulse feel s Knotted, that is the same word that they are using, fie . Or some people would translate it as being ”stu ck” . What you have if you were to analyze that character, it includes the radi cal for silk �田 （on the l eft side). For example, yesterday we menti oned the Three Legendary Emperors, and I added the first one, S u i Ren is the first one w ho basically harnessed Fire from the Heavens and then gave that to Fu Xi. The l ast of the Five Legendary Emperors is referred to as Le i Zu . Lei Zu was the wife of the Yellow Emperor and Lei Zu i s associated with being the cul ti vator of silk. As you know, the Chinese basically cul tivated silk from the silk "\vorm . In fact, one of the earliest ceremoni es that w e have on record is that in the spring, the em peror would ceremonially be the first one to begin to work the fields, while the wife, the empress, would be the first person to put bl essings on the mulberry trees that they w ere cul tivati ng to feed the mulberry l eaves to the silkworm s . So the Yellow Emperor’ s wi fe, Lei Zu, is responsible for the cul ti vati on of silk and silkworms. That became the source of early Chinese wri ting medium, outsi de of bamboo. So the silk is also something that we see ,,vhere something is interwoven together. Strands and strands are w oven together to create fabric. So what you have is thi s idea of something that i s interwoven and something that i s interconnected, l i ke when we say the word J ing 短 . Thi s word Jing i s what i s translated as Channel s today. When you say Jing Luo, you u se that word Jing. That is the same J ing as in Nei Jing, which al so means a religious text or a text that one should revere. When you say the Nei Jing, i t i s the same word . So what you are really saying, and what they are l ooking at is flow that is moving through. Now i f you take thi s word here, Jie 结 ， within this is the w ord that and Ji means lucky . It means good luck. phonetically we pronounce as Ji 吉 Remember I talked about the oracles. Thi s is one of the common words when they say lucky or not, yes or no, that would have been one of the words that wou l d have been carved in the oracl e . So for example when you go to Chinese househol ds on Chinese New Year . Thi s might be a common word you ’11 see posted on their door. In fact you see it on the red envelopes, the ”Lucky Envelopes” . What they are saying is that your l uck, in some ways, is being bound up. You m ay ask， ”Why am I not lucky today？” The idea of silk also means fl ow, something that is an interconnected, with an interwoven flow . So what they are saying is that your flow is somehow disrupted; you kind of ran out of l uck. It is l i ke the silk is Clumped u p . That is why you think of it as Clumping . It is no longer smooth . It is stuck. When that happens, my harmony, my luck begins to get affected. In any case, this is the first theory; the notion that 80
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what you have is the Meri di ans as independent events . They all have their own separate lines. They al l terminate at different places, the Root and Terminati on theory that we see introduced in the L i n g Shu, because that is where we see that, and then again further expanded upon by the ]ia Yi Jing, which essentially has it beginni ng at the Jing Well Points, because that’ s where flow or Water begins. From the Well, you have the fl ow of Water. And where it needs to drain into, or where it needs to go i nto is some of these m ou ntainous regi ons of the body, where the breasts lie on the chest, or where the chin, or the head is located . So they have the Yang Meridi ans beginning at BL-67, GB-44, at ST-45, and keep in mind that they were just given by Chinese names. So we don’t necessarily say that there were 45 Points in the Stomach Channel . We just know that they began at these digits. From there, they move to the head, except that BL-67 goes to Ming M e n . It is debated that’ s where it i s . M ing M e n, as we all know, could argu abl y be at Du-4, but most schol ars believe that was not so. They believe that they were referring to the eyes, because it would m ake sense in relationships to where all the others are terminating, which is at the head . So you have it going to M ing M e n , the eyes. You have i t going to this area known as Clzuang Long. Ch ua ng Lo n g real l y transl ates as a place where you go to wash. Lo ng 麓 is the word dragon, but wi th it you have this radical on top and it is where the dragon lives that is in the water 益 . So, in the ol d days, you go to wash .i n the rivers . So they thi nk of the ears as the Chuang Long regi on . Then it goes into thi s other area of the lips and the mouth. Again, where it is terminating is tow ard s, arguably, the sensory organs, the eyes, the ears, the nose and mouth, wou l d be one way of looking at thi s. So again, you have these Meri di ans going from the extrem i ties to sense the worl d . Now for all of them, while they m a y b e called Blad der Gall Bladder and Stom ach today, from the Roots and Terminations theory, these p arti cul ar Meridians do not connect with the Organs that they are named after. There is no connection with the Organs that they are named after. And the reason why we think that they must be talking about the same Meridians is because later on, the names that they used for these Points, for example BL-67 we knmv as Zhi Yin, Extreme Yin . Then later on they describe the Bladder Meridian as a Continuum and they say it ends at Zhi Y巾， so that we know that this Point that they are referring to in Roots and Terminations is the same Point. Just that, they are now talking about with the Bl adder Meridian beginning at BL-1 and then ending at BL-67. So they must be talking abou t the same thi ng, but why is the flow so di fferent? So this is where the first theory essenti ally states that the Meridi ans begin at the extremi ties and they terminate at the head, the chest, the abdomen, as well as the throat. In the L i ng S h u , i t does not give you the Arm Channels . So essenti ally only the Leg Channels are presented . You have Leg Tai Ya ng, Leg Shao Yang and Leg Yang Mi n g . It is kind of the way they describe i t, going to Mi n g Men, which has been transl ated really as the eyes, to the ears, and to the nose / lip region. Then you have Leg Ta i Y 巾 ， Leg Jue Yin and Leg Shao Yin . This i s the most common depiction that we see. And Leg Tai Y巾， the Spleen, goes to the center of the abdomen. Actually, they give you the Point of Ren-12. So the actual Point is
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given . Leg J u e Yin, this i dea of the Liver, goes to the area at the center of the chest. Again, they give us the Point Ren-1 8, where they say from R e n- 1 8, it actually travel s down to Ren- 1 7. And then Leg Shao Y巾， Ki dneys, goes to the area of the throat regi on and, in particular, R e n-23, The Angul ar Ri dge is the name of that Point. They are giving us now the notion that the extremities have this flow and the flow Terminates at the center of the body . Thi s is the idea of the body dealing with External factors, the Exteri or moving towards the Interior. Remember, the word fie can be seen as where things Terminate, or it can be seen as where things begin to Clump . You can see it as physiol ogy as well as pathol ogy. So there is a pathol ogi cal i nference to it, too. That is the basic "anatomi cal approach”， that i s to say that when you have Yang infl uences, the area that it is first going to be affected is going to be the head . When you have Yin influences, the area it is going to affect i s going to be the abdomen, the chest, or the throat. Likewise, i f you have Yang influences going into Yin influences, then you are going to see things moving from the head into these areas that we mentioned, the abdomen, the chest and the throat. Depending on the nature of that Yang influence, it might concentrate in certain areas Internally as it goes in. So this noti on of Ta i Yan g dealing with Cold, Shao Yang dealing mostly with Dampness, and Ya n g Ming dealing mostl y with Heat. So this is an " anatomical " presentation that we see. Of course, we can say that something that is in Leg Tai Yang can exert an influence over its counterpart, Leg Shao Yang . In other words, diseases do not necessarily follow only one trajectory . It can easily influence the other traj ectory, where it can go across, translocate, on the legs. Just think of water. lf thi s is a flow, why can’t that water overflow and hit against the banks, and overflow into another ri ver? By the ti m e of the L i n g S h 比 we talked abou t the three m 句 or rivers . If you look at the Ling Sh u, the Ling Shu mentions 1 2 Minor Rivers. They don’t mention a Yellow River when they mention the 12 Minor Rivers. So the 1 2 Minor Rivers represent these 1 2 Meridians that have water which can overflow and this is the notion that you can have Meridi ans transversing across each other, that pathology can transverse across each other. It is very important to say that because once I say that, I am going to basicall y say that maybe there are going to be areas where the movement of things transversing across have a greater likelihood of occu口'i.ng. That woul d mean that the m omentum of the flow has to pick up before it can really start to siphon over to another. So it is not going to be where it begins. You are going to start seeing all of thi s beginning to overflow when it gets cl oser to where it is Terminating, because that is where all thi s energy i s gathering u p . Tha t means that l ater on, w hen we develop the Meridi ans, we are going to say at what Point d oes the Bladder Meri d i an overfl ow to the Gall Bladder Meridian. It is going to have to occur, not down in the legs, but as i t i s moving and as the momentum is getting much more strong, the currents, the rapids are getting stronger. That is going to be, as we know, when we look at the Bladder Meridian, where the area seems to have a l ot more momentum buil ding up. And commonly, when we start thinking about the Jiao Points, where these Meridians meet up wi th another, they are going to be prim arily i n the region of the head . That’ s going to be where we are going to see most of thi s interaction taking place, primari l y in the region of the head. For
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example, we know where the Bladder goes to Gall Bladder. Today we would say that for the Bladder, think of thi s energy of the Bladder rushing up and as it ru shes up to the head, it overfl ows back down, like a wave coming up to the top of the head and then i t gets pushed back down . And we know that Bladder, when it reaches the top of the head at Du -20, it comes back down. It goes and it overflows into Gall Bladder at the ears, which we said ori ginally is where the G all Bl adder terminates . That’ s a m aj or area where things . . . So we say that Bladder Meridian meets up wi th Gall Bladder at GB-7 to GB- 1 2, where it circles around the ears . That’ s an example of thi s concept of overflow. So it is going transversely across . Interestingly enough, for those o f us who are Five Element practitioners, we also see how Water now winds up going to Wood . There is also that Five Element context that allows us to extrapolate that information as wel l . We know the Points where G all Bl adder meets up wi th Fire, Triple Energi zer, or where Shao Yang meets up wi th its Arm counterpart. So these are all the same theories, it is j ust that they are interpreted from a different approach. One is a Yin Yang approach . The other one is more of a Five Element approach . Where does Gall Bladder meet up with San ]iao from a Five Element perspective, Wood going into Fire, or from a perspective of the notion of Legs, G all Bladder, moving to its Arm Shao Yang counterpart, Triple Energizer. This coul d be a Point like GB-21 . This is a first theory that we have. And what they are really saying i s that these Meridians onl y meet up wi th the others when there i s an overflow . When there is the word Liu 流 ， it becomes the word Yi溢 . In fact, you see the word Liu appears in the L ing Slz u and then Wang Fu Mi in the Jia Yi Jing is actually going to change that word and make it Yi. So different authors said it is flowing, but what they real ly are describing is an overfl ow . I’m going to change that word and call it Yi. So thi s i s where the Jin Yi Jing would change the actu al wording of the L ing Slz u, becau se now they are thinking more in the context that they are 甘ying to change the imagery that you have. That' s an overfl ow . That’ S
Yi. Thi s is also a term that we see, for example when Zlzang Zhong Jing talks about \Vater that overflow s . W ater that overflows, he says, is known as Yi Yin, overfl owing flu i d s . He i s using that term, overfl owin g fluids, whi ch means usually edema. We have edema in our limbs. That’ s where in Essentials from the Golden Chamber, Zhang Zhong Jing talks about the Four Yin . One of them i s Tan Yin . That i s the first time that w e know the word Tan, Phl egm, appears in Chinese Medi cal li terature, at least documented li terature as in the Slzang Han L u n . Tan does not appear in the S u 队！en . So the Five Yin would be: Tan Y巾， Yi Yin, Zlzi Yin and Xuan Yin . And again, even if you l ook at Zlzang Zhong Jing, it is following a very anatomical con cept. You have Fl u i d, and Yi Yin means overfl owing Fluids and that means edema. Xuan Yin means that you have a l ot of Fluid accumulated in this Termination that we call the chest. So you have what we would probably think of today as pneumoni a, a lot of flui d, so there i s a lot of stuffiness in the chest. Zlzi Yin is that every time you stand up, you have d i zziness, verti go, y ou have thi s Fluid in th e h ea d . It is making your
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consciousness clouded . And Ta n Yin means Fluid that you are expectorating, Expelling is the term that we w ould use, that you are expelling, coughing out. That would be Tan Yin . That i s again an anatomical concept, areas of the head, chest, and extremities that he is using . Question: Xuan Yin? Is referring to what? Answer: Chest. Ta n 痰 m eans Phlegm that you are expectorating. Zh i 支 means a branch, like a branch of your body, like a tree. So Stems and Branches is the same Zh i, so when you stand up like a tree you feel dizzy . You have to sit b a ck d own . Th at’ s w h a t they call Zh i Y i n . X u a n 玄 ， l i ke X u a n S h e n , Scrophul aria, or X u a n , a s i n Chaos, darkness. So Xuan Yin i s that heaviness in the chest. And Yi i s the same w ord here, which means overflowing . And again, this w ord, Yi, whi ch means overflowing, if you take away the w ater radi cal on the si de, al so pronounced Yi, it means to benefit. Water' s role is to benefit sustenance of life. When the w ater becomes overfl owing, it no longer benefits . Thi s word, Yi 益 ， l ike in B u Zhong Yi Qi Wan . That’ s the same Yi, to benefit. And what you are trying to do in B u Zhong Yi Qi Wa n is to get the dynamics of Spleen and Stomach to benefit Post-Natal Qi. So it is the same word . Now the second component that we see in the Ling Sim, this i s where a big departure occurs, and now we are starting to have Meri di ans, Channel s . . . and by the way, the \·\lord Jing is not a term that we see in Cl assi cal wri ting. The word for Channel s in Cl assi cal w riting is the word Ma i. That’ s the term that we see. Later on you \Vill see that that word Mai 服 becom es changed to another word Mai, or another word that is pronounced Mai. And then i t becomes more of this idea of Jing. Questi o n : Does M a i i m p l y l es s communi cati on th a n J i n g , or l ike l ess communi cation beh.veen the Channels? I’m just curious, because I was thinking if they don’t believe that the Channels actually all connect or h ave a complete flow, then they a re thi nking, I just wond ered if tha t M a i has l ess of that implication . Answer: No, not in that context. By the time we use the word Jing, as in Channels as Coll ateral s, they are really saying 出at the Channels, like the Nei Jing, should be somethi ng th at one shoul d really revere . It’ s almost like i t became more or less inti m i d a ting to s tart Needling the Meridi ans, because what you might be doing is upsetting the flow . So you really need to think of acupuncture as a very sacred type of art. That comes from Wang Tao, in the beginnig of the Ta ng Dynasty, basical l y he says that a cupuncture is very dangerous . Some people believe he mi ght have been saying that because of the a ccidents that he saw with these Nine Needles and people getting hurt from them . Others are saying that maybe what he is really saying is that it is such a di ffi cult art to understand . And as a result, he begins to advocate that \Ve should return back to Moxibustion . So that is kind of the beginning phases of that. Later on, in the S o n g Dynasty is where Ji n g appears a lot in the literature . In fact, if you look at acupuncture Points, X u e 穴 means a Point. And the terminology that we use
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for a cupuncture Points in the ol d days i s Kong Xue 孔 穴 . Kong means a Point where things collect, where flow collects . So again, this notion of fluid collecting around thi s Point. The other term that was popular in describing a cupuncture Points \Vas Qi X u e, where Q i is found at these Points, or w here Q i is most resonant at these Points . 队Te don’t use the word Jing Xue, a cupuncture Point, Meri dain Poi nt. That’ s only u sed in the S ong Dynasty . In the Song Dynasty, we say Jing Xue, Meridian Point. In getting back to these, the first chara cter for 儿1a i, if you analyze the characters for these words, this radical in Pin Yin is probably Yong 永 . But this word means fl ourishing, everlasting . So this i magery of som ething flowing through your body th at is fl ourishing through your body continuously . So that is what it means. Again, the character for moon 月 ， is also that character for Organ, that we see used as a radical to the l eft of Yong, as a radi cal, together as the first character we talked about for Ma i . It i s more or less possessive. It’ s mine, i t’s m y flouri shing. When you l ook at thi s word, Mai, remember that term that I described to you earlier. When I say a speciali st, a Shi 氏 ， thi s means family, like when you say I study Yang Family Tai Ji Zhu.an, you u se this word . Ya ng Shi Tai Ji Zlzuan or Wu Slz i Tai Ji Ziman, the Wu Family Ta i Ji Zlzu.a n . That’ s the word that you use. Sometimes they might use the word, Jia 家 . Jia also means the word family, but S h i means a bigger famil y . Jia is a small family . S lz i is like the whole community . I study the Ta i Ji that is from that whole Ya n g communi ty . So that \Voul d be the word Shi. And now, what you have, next to this 氏 ， i s just really that i s that it is being ”clothed ”， i t is almost like a cape that you put around it. And that word becomes, the phonetics of it, normally we woul d put three dots next to it to, Water, is that not only do I take this family and I put my coat on and I go out with the \!\Tater and I go to transmit it. That becomes known as the word Pa i 派 ， tradition . So that when you say I study from the tradi tion of Ta i Ji, so they woul d say instead of Tai Ji Zlz u。”， they would say Tai Ji Pai . Pai means tradi tion. But i t means tradi tion that i s now bei ng sprea d . So for exampl e, in Chinese m artial arts, all of the martial arts are called Pai, because they are spreading it. Any time that you go out and you do missionary work, you are creating a Pai. So when we talk about the Yellow Turbans, these w ere the people that were the peasants that were revolting during the Eastern Han . Remember I put the map of the Western . . . you know Han Dynasty is broken into two periods. You have the Western Han and then you have the Eastern Ha n . The Western Han is the period where expansion began to take place. And then the Eastern Ha n is where revolution begins to take p l a ce and you had these peasants who would wear these yellow turbans on their heads and as a result, we call them the Yellow Turban Rebellion. What they are doing i s they are getting people to come to their order, so to speak. And then what they are doing i s mission ary . So we often refer to them as Yellow Turban Pai. That’ s what they mean when they use the w ord Pa i . The word Pa i refers to thi s i dea that i t i s being put out as a missionary . What I am trying to suggest to you i s that it is very Confuci anist,
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because you have famil y, and what you want to do is believe in something that will benefi t society and that’ s why you go on a mission. You go, like Confucius going to the different Princes and reall y 甘ying to convert them into following these i dols of the past. That’ s conversion. That’ s a missionary . That’ s a Pai. So when we start seeing thi s word Mai 月底 , what we are saying is that your Meridians, not only do they flow, but they connect to a greater part of you, in which case, this is the term that we often begin to use when we see the Meridians as this continuous loop . So it becomes a very different transformation in term s of Chinese l anguage. So the evolution is when you see early books that would use the first Mai that we talked abou t, then i t comes to this second character that we j ust l ooked at, and then it comes to Jing 短 . By the time you see the word M町， with the moon radical, thi s term is also used when you say Mai Ji1叹， which means that the word Mai means Pulse. So it is no longer just a Meridian. It is also a Pulse. And the idea here is that if I went b ack to the history of acupuncture and I talked about the word Resonance, the word that we said acupuncture eventually takes up, Zhen 钝 . So thi s is the word that we use for acupuncture. The early word actu ally was again, they take this 箴 ， so it is still the same word . This is the character here. They don’t use this, which would have simply meant a Needle. That is not what they use. They use the word Zhen . Because this word has the word that means Resonance. Remember, what I am suggesting to you was that they had these stone probes, these B ian, that they were palpating and trying to feel a Point, and they know that thi s Point or any Point that they are touchi ng Reson a ted w i th another part of the bod y . Remember from h ere, from Acupressure, came Bloodletting, with the Moxa. It means when I realize that the life-force is contained in th at Bl ood that I was releasing, maybe I can find l i fe at Pulsating Vessels, whi ch is a term that we see in acupuncture, where pulsating vessel s can be fel t. I can find these Pulsating Vessels . So now, maybe I can figure out that there must be an area where Pulsating Vessels can be found that will tell me about the entirety of the body: the development of Pulse taking . Remember, this i s an organization process, because it is really the Nan Ji n g that began to say that you should take the Pul ses at the radial artery . Pri or to that, the L ing Sim suggests that you should be taking i t at ST-9, or at LU-9. You can, in fact, in the l ater p art of the S u l八1en, they even have Pulses on the feet that you would be taking. So there are a lot of other Pulses, like the inguinal Pul se, that you could be taki ng . So now what they are saying is that the Pul ses represent the Resonance that i s coming from these Organs that we were trying to Resonate with in our early devel opment of acupun cture, of the stone probes. We are trying to Resonate with the Meri di an and I realize that in the process of Needling and Bleeding and Cauteri zing, that maybe I can find Vessels that will Resonate . Instead of using these stone probes, we can j ust find Vessels . And we start researching the human body to find where the Vessels can be found, and then came the Mai Jing. We can find a range of qual i ties in the muscles when we palpate. We find an area that feels flacci d, an area that feels infl amed in terms of temperature, an area that feel s tight, or an area that feels like the texture of it doesn' t really have
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resilience to it. Couldn’t those qualiti es be found in the Pulse? Can I find that l oss of resilience? Can it be slippery? Can I find that tightness in the Pulse, j ust as I find the tightness in the hand s . So what I’m suggesting i s that the nom encl atu re that they use from palpati on just became refined within Pulse taking. That’ s all that they did. They just put i t in thi s context of Pulse taking, becau se it i s inseparable when you l ook at the word Ma i, from the word Meridian. I t’s j ust that l ater generations will change it again and say， ”Well, thi s means Meridian and I ’ m going t o use 出e original word for Meri dians and m ake that mean the Pul se.” So this is where it is used interchangeabl y . So when you see Wang S h u He' s Mai J i n g , he uses this term Mai 眠 . When you see L i Shi Zhen ’ s Ma i Jing, he u ses the first character for Ma i that was a combinati on of 月永 . Both of them are pronounced "Ma i” and it can mean Vessel, i t can mean Pulse. They use the terms interchangeably. Definitely we no longer use either one of these terms \vhen \'\Te w ant to represent the Channel s. We use the word Jing 短 ， with the exception of Eight Extraordinary Vessels, which are still called Mai 服 . Vve haven’ t lost that nomencl ature because it was one way of helping use to di fferentiate the Mai, the Vessels, from the Meridians. Question: When they were doing thi s palpation and then the palpati on of the Pulses, were they thinking in terms of the Organs, or were they just thinking in terms of the Meridians? Answer: They were thi nking in terms of the Meridians first. Becau se we woul d say that that hi stori cally seems to be more appropriate because they don’ t have the Meridians connecting to the Organs. Question: And that was the Pul se taking as well ? And that related to th e Pulse taking as wel l ? They weren’t taking Pulses of the Organs? Answer: It’s almost like thi s i s the image that you want to get. Remember, alrea d y we kn ow from the Classics that it appears that we were rea l l y anatomically inclined . That would m ake sense because if w e were palpating, what we are palpating is the Skin and we w ant to palpate, to som e degree, m aybe all the way down to the Bone. That’ s how we often see the Cl assi cs being wri 忧en . ”It is in the l evel of the Ski n. ， ， ”If it is in the Skin, Needl e this group of Points . If it is in the Bones, Needle that.” So this is a palpational component. Now what you are seeing is that as you are palpating, you are going from the surface to the deep . And as you are, through the techni ques that we are devel oping from Cauterization or Moxibustion, which basi cally, remember, is on the l evel of the ski n, it can go to the subcutaneous region and have effect on the Sinews. But then we went from Cauterizati on to Bl ood-letting, whi ch goes to the level of the Fl esh and the Vessels, because it goes deeper, or at least it is m ore concentrated . ＼气＇ith Bl ood-letting, it is obvious that they found that it has an effect that is a little different than Moxibustion . Whenever we see Blood-letting being described, it is often in describing, the Collaterals, the Luos �·各 another terminology 出at we created, but not only the Luos. Again, the word Luo has the silk radical from 林 ， that movement radi cal, and then the word Ge 各 . This word Ge means Closure, something i s closed, som ething is blocked, a term that
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we see a l ot in the Na n Jing . So what they are saying i s that L u o involves something that is occl u d ed, something that is blocked . And a similar character, Ke means Guest, as in Guest Qi, but in that case we put the hou se radical on top of that 客 . So that would be Guest. So what happens is that you have thi s Guest Qi that has come and it is causing Closure in the Meri dians. What that means is, here is the Meridian, and a Luo is being created, like a detour off to the side. That Luo means it is a diversion of the normal flow of Qi. So that creates a Closure, so we Blood-let that. As we Blood-let that, we noti ce that the effects of it, what is much more stronger than Cau teri zation . We noti ce that when we Bl ood-l et it, it seems to have a much deeper effect on the body. So that means that where Pul sating Vessels can be found, where Blood can be found, where you might Bl ood-l et these Pul sating Vessels, it seems to tell us something more about the deeper aspect of the body: Microcosm - Macrocosm . That means that by the tim e I take the Pul se of the Pulsating Vessels, it must tell us not only about the Exterior that I am locally touching, but it must also tell us about the Interi or, whi ch would tell us about the Zang Fu. So this is where 出at component comes in. That means the invention of Mai is to really, from al l of this experimentation, giving u s information abou t the Zang Fu . Getting back to thi s other aspect, now what you have in terms of the Meridi ans, is now you have the Meridi ans connecting to the Zang Fu. I t’ s no longer only coming from the extremities. It seems to go up and down and so forth . The notion here is that from the arms it seem s to be moving up to the head, and from the head it moves to the legs, and from the legs it moves into the chest. From the ch est i t goes back out to the arm s . Thi s is an anatomi cal Continuum that we are looking at. That is to say that the Yang Arm Channel s go to the head . That’ s the traj ectory, the presentation. Then here, we have the Leg Yang Channels begi nning at the head and they travel down the legs, ending at the legs. And then the leg is where you have the Leg Yin Channel s beginning and they go into the region of the chest. And in the chest is where you have the Arm Yin Channels beginning and they go to the arms. That’s the basic sequence of movement. This is a Continuum now. We are saying that no longer are things just traveling from the extremi ties to the central axi s . They are going in and out, i n and out, in and out. Th at i s, again, thi s theory of Resonance. Earlier I’m trying to Resonate and figure ou t what i s happening in the Interior via the Exterior. And now what we are saying is that by doing that, we realize what i s happening, that the Interi or also returns back ou t t o the Exterior to demonstrate the dynamics of i ts flow . So what you are seeing is that once we start l ooking at Blood-letting and feeling the Pulsating Vessels, we are starting to develop this im agery that things Insi d e also pulsate Outside. It’ s no longer just a Resonance theory, that here’ s the Microcosm Point, and there' s the Macrocosm, the body . But now we are starting to see 出at there is an overlap between the two. Furthermore, the theory now is suggesting that if you have this External Internal relati onship, as defined by Qi and Blood, or in the ol d days, Wei Q i or Ying Qi, now we can start creating this Continuum concept of the Meridians as a loop . It goes in and then it comes back out, and now it gives me this message and it goes back i n, and comes back out. Not for the sake of giving me the
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message, by the way, but just the notion that it is just going in and out, in and out. Now thi s is very important. This is one of the big arguments that has been levied tow ard s some contemporary practi tioners from people who read the Classics. What they are saying here is that by giving us this sequence, it is also giving us the order of flow, which is important in the order of Point selection in treatmen ts . Because we know that in Point selecti on, there are usual l y two approaches, generally speaking. One is that you go from the center back out. So if you have a head ache, you Need l e i t locally and then you Needle the extremities . That would be that Root and Termination strategy . That’ s one approach . The second approach wou l d be that you shou ld be foll owing the M eridians relative to what i t is tha t you are trying to do. That is, l et’ s say, someone had, i f we u sed the TCM pattern, Constrained Li ver Q i or Liver Qi Stagnation . In TCM, the general treatment principle is to Regulate Li ver Qi and among their Point selection, let’ s assume they are using L V -14, LV -3 and they might even add in GB-34 . Let’ s assume that the basic skeleton of that treatment is being used to Regulate Qi. Now what you have is a Point that is on the chest. You have a Point that is on the l eg, and another Point that is on the leg. In thi s case, you have a Leg Yang Channel and a Leg Yin Channel . And then you have a chest Point that is being used . Then the question here i s, do I Needle LV-3 first, or do I Needle L V - 1 4 first, or do I Needle GB-34 first? That’ s a fund amental, philosophical question that people ask. Some peopl e would say it doesn't matter. From the Classi cs point of view, if your respective Meridians are a conti nuum, it does matter, because if you are going to look at Constrained Liver Qi, and l et’ s say the prim ary symptom that you have of 出is Constrained Li ver Qi is diaphragmatic constricti on, even though people will rarely compl ain about that in clinical practi ce. But let’ s assume that in Cl assi cal literature, they woul d, because that’ s the terminology people would say . They say, " My Ge feel s realiy tight. My di aphragm feels really tight.” But let’ s assume that i s what they are describing . So if you are looking at this format, what it infers here is tha t if it i s in the chest, here the symptom primarily is in the chest, you want something to go from the chest, and you want to reduce it. You want it to come out, and eventually it comes out through the arm s . What i s missing here is you do口’ t have a n arm Point. W e a l l know i n TCM, i t is common that we might add PC-6 to this treatment. That' s the Jue Yin relationship. So let’ s assume that we added that in and 出at wou l d actu ally make thi s treatment more effective based on the strategy. But before we get to the chest, it means that if I want to look at this and I’m using these Points, what I’m also saying is that these Points, External, Exterior Legs, extremities, might be moving thi s Qi to Stagnate in the chest, which we need to drain out through the arms. So you might begin with the Leg Ya n g Channel s, because what we have here is the Leg Ya n g Channels, on the head. Let’ s say i f you had a head Point, you might have, l et’ s say you ad ded in a head Point because the person has diaphragmatic constri ction wi th a headache. Let’ s assume that they have a headache. So in TCM, you might add in the headache’s Ashi Point, but let’ s assume that if you stay within this context, and you add in the Extra Point Tai Ya ng. They have migraines . So for
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the migraine: head: Tai Yang, Leg Yang: GB-34, Leg Yin : LV-3, LY-14, ending with PC-6. That would be the order that this treatm ent would have used to effectively treat this Constrained Li ver Q i, based on the sequence concept. It would not have been, "Oh, just use those Points, . As long as you Needle all of them, you'll have it done.” The assumpti on here is then you don’t really understand that the Meri dians have a fl ow sequence that they follow . This is what they suggest that we need to do. So thi s is another very important avenue that we see coming when we start developing the l oop, that the order of the Points m ake a big difference . Hierarchy m akes a big difference. I t’ s very Confuci anist in this way. So again, we see the influence of Confuciani sm over the dynamics of what thi s has to offer us. It’s not to say that if you are treating someone, that you have to use all of these, come up with Points all along this thing. Obviously, we don’ t have a Yang Arm Point. But let’ s assume if they di dn’t have a headache, then we don’ t need thi s Ta i Ya n g Point. All we have to do is look at the Leg Ya n g Point and defini tel y Leg Yang GB-34 will affect headaches too. You can l ook at that. But the components, ,.vherever the chief complaint i s, you don’t want to just look at where it is at. You want to l ook at where it can go to. And this is a major theme that we see once we have the Meri dians as a continuum, is that you are concerned about, key word, Transmission. The Su Wen specifi cally tells us, as well as the L i ng S lz u , don’ t stare at the di sease eye to eye. Understand its Transmission . \Vhere is it going to go? Whi ch is what the Nan Jing is telling us. "Gee, how do we know where it is going to go? I don’t know. Well let’ s create a theory . We have this philosophi cal theory of Five Elements. Let’s add that i n . ” A n d then the Na n Jing i s goi ng t o go from a Five Element perspective, whi ch makes it a littl e bit more exciting, because from the Five Element perspective, i t takes us away from having to j ust u se Points rel ated t o the Meridian that w e think i s involved . We begin to see that it might go, not only from the Yin to its Yang, bu t it can also transverse across Meri dians. That was the earl ier theory, that you can have overflowing . That means we can now bridge the two systems together. It i s overfl owing. It i s also at the same time continuousl y seen as a loop. Now you have the combinati on of how I can add other Meridians to my treatmen ts . I don ’ t have to just stay with one Meri dian or one Meridian group. That’ s the context. Once you start saying, "\i气／ell, PC-6, why am I looki ng at PC6？” Because Wood goes to Fire. Not exactly Na n J i n g , but Wood goes to Fire. That’ s why we cou l d use PC-6 . At least you start to rationalize it. Or, if you don’t use that term, it transverses across Jue Yin . The Legs go to the Arm s. Both of those, remember, are p art of one Zone . Arm s and the Legs affect each other, and the other one is Five Element. Both of those theories are happening s i m u l taneou sl y in Chi n e s e Medi cal theory . So now you have where intell ectuall y you can see why all of this is coming in . Then the question woul d have been, "VVhy exactl y do you select these Points? 飞何hy not other Points？” Again, Classi cal literature would not necessarily agree with the TCM selection of these Points . That’ s where some of the di fferences will lie, because they will analyze this (LY-3) as an Anti que Point. They will analyze this (LV-14) as a Mu
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Point. They will analyze this (GB-34) as an Antique Point. They would analyze thi s (PC-6) as a L u o Point. And they wou l d 甘y to come u p with a rationale of why you are using these Points, in terms of the number and the categories, rather th an the Meridians. They understand the Meridians, but 出ey would say， ’ Why those Points? Why not something else? Why not LV- 1 ？ ” I f you are coming from a Nan Jing point of view, LV-1 treats, all Jing Well Points， 甘eat any fullness 出at is fel t in the sub-sternal reg i on . 1月vhy not LV- 1 ? 飞月vell, because L i n g Shu practi ti oners wou l d say that LV-1 is mostly for Wei Qi, m ore External . This is more an Internal condition. “Then, don’ t use LV-1 . Just use a Luo Point." This is where the d ebate goes. And thi s i s how Point combinations begin to get developed in Cl assical literature. That’ s a big departure for that one question . Question : Fascinating departure. The other question in terms of the continuum, what we are familiar with, say, LU-1 1 to LI-1, when did that happen? Answer: Wi th the Ling Sim . Everything wi th regard to the Continuu m is part of the Ling S / zu . I mean, from a documented point of view, that’ s the earli est reference that we know for that. Pri or to 1 973, the assumption was th at 出ey probabl y had the Continuum all along . N ow we foun d these books that d ate back earlier than the Ling Shu and thi s is where we dispute that probabl y before that, they did not really have the Continuum idea. But again, that was already d ebated among pra cti tioners because we always see this Root and Termi nation theory, plus you have the Meridians as a continuum . People say， ”Maybe they meant som ething el se. Maybe that was j u st pathology, and the Meridi ans as a Continuum really is the way it is." Now, the l ast point that I do want to make about the Continuum Theory is that the Continuum Theory now is basically telling u s several things. The first thing 出at we have is the notion that something External can move to the Internal and it com es back out to th e External . So this is why, if that is the case, we are seeing Yang going into Yin and then Yin coming back out to Yang, and so forth . So alread y we can see how they would order the sequencing, becau se we have in term s of El ements, you are going to have Yin and Yang communicating wi th each other. But at the same time, you also have the theory that we had earlier. That is that the Meri dians not onl y foll ow these concepts, but they also follow the concepts of the Zones, or what I call Zones, Ta i Yang, Shao Yang and Yang 儿!J ing that we mentioned . And what it seems to tell us is that Tai Yang, Shao Yang and Yang Ming seem to not only transvese across in this fashion, but the Leg Channel seems to come up and meet with the Arm Channels . So that means that by the time we develop a Looping system, we are going to have to reconcile all of these in some manner. So, as we know, when you look at 出e Lungs, yes， 由e Yin meets up with its Ya n g, External, in terms of i ts traj ectory . It d efi ni tel y begins Internall y and goes out Externally, and then i t returns back Internal l y . So you have thi s i dea of Yin m eeting up with Yang. But, at the same tim e, we know that you have the idea of Ya ng M ing of, the Arms, in this case, meeting up with Ya ng Ming of the Legs, Stomach. So they are trying to reconcile all of this together as one Continuum, so that both theories in some ways are being satisfied. 91
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And at the same time, what we are seeing in this sequence (LU, LI, ST, SP, HT， 日， BL, Kl, PC, TW, GB, LR) is also the notion that here is Metal (LU-LI ) . So you still have the Five Element thinkers who are influential. You have Earth (SP ST), and then you start to go into Fire (HT-SI), Water (KI-BL), and then you have this idea of Fire, the notion of Pericardium, Triple Energi zer or San /iao and then, Wood (LV-GB) . So we also have this linking, Shao Yin with Tai Yang, Shao Yang and this idea of Jue Yin. What we are seeing in this context is some consistency in term s of Five Element, that Metal, Earth, Fire, Water, Fire, Wood . So what we are seeing here is what appears to be the reversal of the Five Element Theory that was standardized. The Five El ement that was standardized towards the earl y part of the Han Dynasty . We see the Five Element Theory being standardized . And now what you are seeing here i s the reversa l . So i t is almost l ike the clinicians are reminding us that the Fi ve Element Theory doesn’t really just go one \vay. It also goes backw ards too. Now some of you might be having 甘ouble '"rith thi s part here (the sequence) . Remember the idea of the Five Element Theory being integrated by Zou Yan �� -M with the Yin Yang Theory, is here you have the ancient depiction of Yin and Ya n g . It i s j u st this depicti on, the circle divided evenly in half by a
s甘aight line, up and down . Again, con廿ary to what you would think, they don’ t h ave this symbol (the Yin Yang wi th the sine wave) during this period of time in China . At least we haven’t found any indication that they had this symbol . Peopl e believe that it was developed in the Song Dynasty by another person . This is the earl y depi ction. And the notion named Zlzou Dun Yi 周 敦 ＆Ji: here is that when you go from the highest peak, that’ s where the transformation occu rs, where Fire would be the highest. For Fire to become Y巾， it has to come into contact with Water (the lowest), because Water is the source of all beginning of other aspects. So Metal reversing back to Earth . Earth goes to Fire. At Fire, it has to go to Y巾， to Water, and from that it comes back out to Fire to create its counterpart Wood . So it is the reverse of the Five Element Theory that we see. So this part is just talking about the transformative phase that occurs . The question is, why did they begin with the Lung Meri dian? Why are they beginning with Ta i Y i n ? I mean, it would make more sense if we are fol l owing the theory th a t l i fe was created by Water, that Water was the organizing force for Chaos, because Chaos created Water, whi ch organized it into Yin and Yang . Why not have the Meridians begin wi th Water. Why not begin with the Kidneys? Why begin with the Lungs? So this is something that has been debated among Classical practitioners . In fact, some people have even su ggested that the Meri di an sequence is entirely wrong, that it is not in the proper sequence that it shou l d be. And the most common consensus of why it has to begin wi th Metal is the noti on that we are looking at Meridians that conduct Qi and Qi is synonymous with the first breath, which is rooted in the Lungs. S。 由i s is the argument that people use to look at this . Because the Ling S lz u doesn’t tell u s why i t begins with the Lung s . I t just gives i t . So the assumption is we have to accept it, but there must have been debates about that in the Cl assical times, that this is not necessarily true. And of course, their way of getting around this is very easy, because in the Nei Jing what they do is, "What 92
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I’m about to give you was given to me by the Immortals.” So that m akes it very di ffi cu lt to d ispute that these Immortal s were wrong. So tha t’ s one way of getting around it. In any case, that becomes one of the fundamental questions that is pondered upon by Classical practi ti oners. In the Dao Zang Jing, the Daois t has an explanation for that. They buy into thi s theory that life begins with the first breath . Many of you are familiar with the Daois t theory about that. The Dao Zang Jing of the Ming Dynasty, which is a compil ation of Chi nese Daois t wri tings, includes a l ot of the m edical wri tings, because medi cine to the Daois ts was science . It was part of their science. To them, it was not necessarily out of compassion, that we see \·vith Buddhism, that we treat patients, but it was a science of understanding nature. So to the Daois ts, their i dea was that the trini ty of the human l i fe is broken up i n to Survival, Interacti on and Di fferenti ation. Thi s i s the Dao is t expl anation of the twel ve Primary Meri dians and their order. So to them, Survival was respiration and digestion. That’ s why in Daois t texts they believe that there is a hierarchy that nothing in your body is going to be strong if respiration is weak. And if respirati on is strong and you have other problems, then digestion is secondary. So they actually beli eve that by l ooking at Qi Gong, looking at di gestion . . . and again, this is a very Sun Si Miao approach . S u n S i Miao was hi ghly into this term that was already being used in Classical li terature, that is the term Yang She陈 善 生 whi ch was found in 1 973 among those 14 medical texts . This was a very comm on theme. How do we Nourish and Nurture the body? Throu gh breath, what they would call Dao Yin in those d ays， 。r Qi Gong today and proper nutriti on, Ya ng Sheng . And again, proper nutrition means cooked . \t\le talked about why they believed that cooking was such an important aspect of hum an health. Everything el se is secon dary to that. So these become preventative measures. Then they say that after respiration and digestion comes Interacti on, whi ch is the sleeping . That is, anything that is interacting, anything that involves Interaction, involves movement. That means circul ation, movement of Blood, m ovement of your physi cal anatomy, m ovem ent of Fluids, something that has substance that is moving through your body . And then Differentiati on to them involves the Portal s, the Qiao, the Portal s, the Ori fi ces. And that framework to them expl ains why Survival is Lungs and Large Intestines, and Digestion is Stomach and Spleen. The other aspect we sometimes have to consider is sleeping as a prerequisite of Survival, that would be under the auspice of the Heart. Heart deal s with Blood . That’ s Interaction . Again, the focus tends to be more on the Zang Organs than the Fu, because the Fu are seen as secondary, mainly becau se the Zang contains. It stores. It holds . And they believe that the Za ng is where the Dao is l ocate d . And the Fu are the acti ons, the kineti cs, the movement. It’ s the bowel s that em anates the Dao and that’ s the virtue, that’s the De, that’ s the power that comes as we exert the Wei. Confucianists would think that the Zang that we m entioned yesterday . As we emanate the has the prin ciple, the Li 理 princi p l e of the Organs and we bring that Organ ou t, we d emonstrate that through the rituals. That's the Li 橙 that they say. So if you have principle, we
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can see i t in the Ri ghts . We can see i t in the formalities of your actions. That’s the Confucian way of looking at this idea . In any case, the focus i s on the Z a n g . So Interaction, Blood, Kidneys, Water, Jing Essence, Bone. That’ s movemen t. And then, when you get into the Portals, that’ s Peri cardium. Pericardium, remember, is the Heart Protector. It is the way that you see the world or the way that you protect yourself in m aking the world finite. The Liver, remember is responsibl e for the smooth flow of Qi, whi ch to a Daois t is a relative concept. Nothing i s smooth except rel ative to you . Things are not going your way, then you would say that you don’t have smooth flow of Qi. Someone else would say， “ I woul d have smooth flow of Q i if I had those circum stances .” So it is relative, relative to the way you see the world . It’ s rel ative t o the w a y you surround yourself with people that say certain things to you that always makes you angry . So if you change your percepti on of them and you accept them that they will always say that to you, it no longer becomes a big deal, unless you have to avoi d them. Then it becomes more of a Heart Protector issue. Those are called the i ssu es of Di fferenti ation . So for the Daois ts, that’s their explanation of why the Ancients created the sequence the way they did, from the Lungs all the way to the Liver. And in doing so, the Daoists have suggested to us measures that work wi thin each level . As I sai d, S u n Si Miao basically emphasized for Survival : Q i Gong and digestion, meditation and sleep . These are the preventative measures. Interaction . They basi cally saw that Interacti on was where you are looking primarily at acu puncture. Acupuncture tri es to m ove the fl ow of things, h ow things are interacting, an d how you interact with the world and get stuck with that and it gets internalized in your bod y . Acupuncture i s really an interactive therapy . I t is a form of m ovement therapy . And then when you l ook at Di fferenti ati on, they are l ooki ng at things to change the Portal s, be it through smell, the use of incense in the old days, be it through voi ce, the use of chanting or m antras. And as you chant out loud, it becomes sound therapy, hearing therapy . Or someti m es chanting is internali zed . There is also vi sualizati on, seeing, or color therapy . So these would be the modalities that wou l d be associ ated wi th Differentiation, whi ch normally, in the ol d days, they would say that at the level of Di fferenti a tion, you need to go to the Shamans. You need to go to the priests. And that i s why i f you want to see more about how we change the Portals, you have to really read religious wri tings. Religious wri tings are where the li terature is very ri ch in the areas of the Portal s . Okay, are there any questions then before we take a break here? Okay so let' s do a short break.
B.
Ben Cao 本 草
The Herbals
We are nmv going to examine the herbals, its modality of healing and some of the phil osophi cal and hi stori cal el ements pertaini ng to the herbal . We now know that essentially there are a number of other textbooks that we can include when we talk about the herbal . For example, among the 14 documents
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that were found in 1 973, we know that there was among them the Classi c on the 52 di seases, the Wu Slzi Er Bi11g Fang, the Formulas or Prescriptions for Fifty-Two Diseases . That is a much more recent textbook, and in there they do itemize about 242 herb s and th e use of these herb s for treating certain medical conditions. Be reminded again that in Chinese Medi cine, when we use the word ”di seases”， a lot of times, they are more like symptom s . They are not reall y diseases . They are not like a particular condition . For example, they could talk about pain. That can be seen as a disease. It could be Bi obstruction. That can be seen as a di sease. It could be the Jue. Jue usually means, is often translated as, the Collapse Syndrome. So fainting coul d be seen as a disease . So that i s more of a symptom . It doesn' t reall y, tod ay, from our point of view, from a Western point of view, m edical point of view, that is, we won’t real l y cl assify those as di seases. So there is wheezing, vomiting, nau sea, signs and symptoms of Rebel lious Qi or cou ghi ng . These are all considered diseases or classified as diseases . Not onl y do we see that in the textbook on the Prescriptions of Fi fty Two Di seases, we also see that in the Ling Slzu as well as in the Su Wen under the chapters on diseases. The other textbook that I also want to talk about, that we don’t sometimes look at in the stu d y of herbal medi cine, is the Sh i Jing 持 短 . It means the text on poems. It is a 6th Century B . C . E . text that basically was an anthology of different poems . An d in this anthology of poems, they also describe about 50 herbs, medicinal plants, where in the poem, they woul d talk about an herb growing in su ch and such a place. They wou l d talk about someone taking thi s herb . So there i s some medi cal aspect to that anthology of poems. So that' s another resource that one might l ook at in Cl assi cal l iterature to see where peopl e and how peopl e were using herbal medicine. 1.
Shan Hai Jing 山 海 短
The Mountain
&
Sea Classic
A lot of tim es, when you look among Chinese historians, even prior to the modern century, when they look at the history of Chinese Medicine, one of the first books they talk about is the Shan Hai Jing 山 海 9豆 , the Mountain and Sea Classic. The Shan Hai Jing has been translated into English. So if you are interested, you can get a copy of that. It is not promoted so much in the medical community . It is more seen as a stu d y of Chinese mythol ogy, because in there, they actually give you a J ot of mythological beings. They have animal s that have several heads. So it is kind of like things that we do not believe in today. But this was said to be a geographi cal survey that was done in China . The author of it, we don’ t know who wrote that. We know that the book was wri tten inthe Zhou Dynasty, whi ch started in the 1 1 th Century B .C . E ., to the Han Dynasty. So the actual dating of the text is subj ect to interpretation . But it is said to be a geographical descrip tion of pl ants and anim als and minerals that are found in different pl aces of China and the so-called Middle Kingdom. Included in thi s book are d es cripti ons of l ocal Gods or spirits that o n e can find a n d these mythological beings. So it is an interesting textbook. Most people don’t give it credibility because of these mythological beings. 95
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The description of the herbs is preventative. So it is not describing the use of herbs to treat diseases, but rather to prevent diseases. The word i s Fang 防 The radi cal is the same Fang 方 as in Fang Shi that we mentioned earlier in yesterday’s discussion, the movement from Shamanism into the Teacher into the Priest, Fang Slz i i s 方 士 often depicted in this context and then later on we talked abou t it more in thi s context with this word Shi 自币 • Both of these are pronounced " S h i" . And Fa n g means a method, a prescription, a techni que . That’ s all part o f this translation. I n medical terminology, often it is translated as prescription, because very often when you get an herbal prescription, they call it by thi s word Fa ng . \!\That you are seeing is a prescription that allows you . . . the radi cal on the left in this character 防 is the character that you saw wi th the character Yin 除 and Yang l喝 . We talked abou t it yesterday when the sun (radical wi th square and line throu gh i t) rises above the mountain peak (radical on left, l ying on its si de) . Here is the mountain . All we di d is superimpose it this way . We begin to see the brightness of the sun over the horizon that shines on all things (radical, lower ri ght of character for Yang) . What it is really saying is that a Fang i s a prescripti on that helps you climb over the difficulties, like someone \vho is climbi ng a m ountain, the mountains th at we have to overcome, the mountains that we have to climb . And in this h arshness of mountainous terrain is Wind . It’ s Col d . We definitel y know those are the climatic factors. So what it i s saying here i s a prescription to help you prevent these harsh weather conditi ons that you can be subjected to in the mountains, that we wil l be climbing in our lives, from m aking you sick. That’ s the word Fang 防 ， as in the case of Fang Fe睬， Siler, the idea of protecting, warding off Wind. So the word Fang translates as w arding off. That was basically the use of the medi cinals. The word Fang appeared several times in the text. So it is w arding off diseases. The text talks abou t wearing amulets. That’ s a very common concept that we see in many botani cal textbooks or medicinal botanical Ben Cao books. Even in Li Sh i Zhe n ’ s book, he tal ks about wearing herbs in pouches, as amulets against certain perversity, in particul ar, amulets against p arasites, the word Gu, whi ch also appears in the Shan Hai Jing, as amulets against Yi, epidemics, and as amul ets against G z 汀， Ghosts . So these situations were commonl y where we see the use of amul ets . One of the earli est amulets we have was wearing or putting Artemesia Vulg ari s, mugwort, Moxa, in pouches and wearing it to protect us against, in particular, what they call Yi. Yi means epi demics. It’s this character 疫 . That’ s in fact, if we look at this word, Yi, this basically refers to an arm (radical inside, on top) holding a weapon (radical inside, on bottom ) . That’ s what the word here is, an arm holding a weapon. Most commonly we think of the weapon as an arrow . This is the early interpretati on of this word Yi. In fact, this is always the disease radical (on the left hand side, and above) whenever you see that. That’s the disease radi cal . If you look at the term for doctor, which is pronounced Yi 里 ， what you have is an open container and in thi s open container, wha t you have i s anηory (radical upper right) . You have a bunch of armory . What you are doing is you are going into this container and you are getting your hands on the armory and generally the impression is that you are holding an arrow, that thi s is probably a chest of arrows . And, what you are doing is using these arrows to pierce, to probe, B ian, the stone arrows, the stone
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instruments, the body, whi ch i s the earli est form of the word Yi, which we know means doctor. So a doctor was a Shaman, the word, ＼屿，t (radical on bottom), that hel d these in his or her hand, most likely a woman, these arrows, these pointy instruments and they were trying to get rid of, most commonly, epi demi cs, Yi. Again, the disease radical next to this character, Yi. And we know that l ater on this character, Yi, began to change, where we replaced the Sham an, because we didn’t want people to be too superstitious and it was repl aced with thi s character 嚣 ， whi ch is essenti ally a jug (radical on bottom ) . In other words, a very archaic fo口口， this woul d be how it looks . So you have a jug \vi th a top on it and then you have water in the mi ddle. These jugs, thi s wa ter I found in the S/Ja ng Dynasty, and we know that the vessel s in the Slzang Dynasty was used for wine. And \vhen we put the water radi cal next to it, thi s i s the word, Jiu 酒 ， ＼vhi ch means liquor or wine . The earl y practi tioners, when they evol ved from Shamanism, were administering wines to help people. Or some people mi ght say the wine was more for anesthesiology, to numb the area, or to have them drink it to numb themselves, or to appl y it after a piercing with these Needl es, these arrows, through the person’s body, almost like an anti septi c . Some peopl e w ou l d i nterpret， ” N o, i t’ s real l y about the administration of wine ." In fact the earliest diction ary that we have in Chinese hi story, \·vhen they l ook under the m eaning for the word Yi, Yi was abou t administering wine for the healing of diseases or condi ti ons . So i t was about taking these medi cinal wines, which then further supported the belief that the evolution of Chinese medicine became mainly involved in herbal m edicine. If you are an acupuncturist, you will go back and say, ＇’No, that di dn’t really mean that. It means they are administering these a盯ows. These were the acupun cture Needles and the liquor, the wine, was just to clean the wounds afterwards.” So there are di fferent i nterpretati ons, but the earliest dictionary of Chinese hi story seems to suggest that was about administering medicinal wines. Question: Is th e fi gure on the ri ght solely the fi gure for doctor or i s i t a combination of 出e two? Answer: This character is the character for doctor, Yi 誓 Question : The both of them together, the upper and the l ower? Answer: Yes, all together. Thi s v.rould be the earlier character for Yi 壁 ， doctor, which inferred that they were Shamanistic, and the other one is the current one , and this word comes from the Han Dynasty . So if you write thi s word, it means doctor. In mainland China, they simplified the character, so it’ s just this part （由e radi cal in the upper left corner) . They just took thi s part and said， “That’ s Yi. ” Again, they simplified the character t o make it easier t o l earn, compared to the relati ve complexity of the ol der characters. I t's easy enough, that’s the word Yi. The reason why I’m talking about the word Yi 暑 is that this part of the character that you see (the radical in the upper right corner), is the same as what we see under the disease radical 疫 ， whi ch means epidemics. So this was one
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of the common things that we saw in ancient Chinese medical history that they were treating a lot of epi d emics and one of the ways that you deal with epidem i cs i s fumigation. You wear something and u sually i t’ s an aromatic substance, an amul et, to try to ward off these so-called perverse, noxious, evil infl uences . And, we see that in the Slzan Hai Jing. We see them talking about the u se of wearing certain herbs to prevent diseases and again, one of the earliest herbs was what we u se for Moxibustion. So again, Moxibustion could have been using Cauteri zatio矶 not necessarily just for treating di seases, but also using Cauteri zation to ward off epidemi cs. So this is where we might look at it from the character analysis. 2.
Shen Nang ’ s Ben Cao
神晨
本草
The earli est herbal tex tb ook that w e associate ·wi th Chinese medi cine is
Shen Nang’s Ben Cao, the Ben Cao associated "\Vith Shen Nang. I t’ s believed to have been completed during the early part of the Han Dynasty . Again, the early part of the Han is called the Western Han period . And generally it was believed that it was compiled by Fang Sh is, not by Slzen Nang, but by Fang S il i s who might have i nheri ted the tradition of Shen Nang, orally, as some peopl e have suggested,
because they didn’t have anything in writing done . After the oral transmi ssion, eventu ally i t gets com p i l e d onto si l k or onto bamboo, where there i s a cl assifi cation of 365 herbs. 360 to 365 i s that commonali ty that we often see in early Ha n Dynasty vvri ting. For example, even acupuncture, they give us 360 Points. It is almost like, not because there were 360 Points, but because they were thinking of 360 days in the year. So to them, each Point rel ates to the Macrocosm of a year. So that means 出at they are forcing themselves to find 360 Points. This is a context. We know that even thou gh we talk about 360 Points, if you look at the time from the L ing Sh u, through the history of Chinese medicine, you have about 600, more than 600, actually about 650 distinctive names of acupuncture Points. Granted, some of these names were referri ng to the same Points, ju st di fferent names for the same Points, becau se different traditi ons have di fferent w a y s of und erstan d i n g the Points . One of the ways that peopl e l earn acupuncture was by memorizing the odes, the songs of Points. So that was one aspect that we saw . We also know that, even though we have abou t 650 distinctive names, in modern times, we only reall y acknowledge about 400 Point names. We don’t use a lot of these names anymore. So some of these names have become obsolete. If you tally up Points from all of the Meri dians that we use today, along with the R e n and the D u , there’s abou t 361 Points. If you add up the 67 Points of the Bladder with 45 Stomach and all that, single Points, not bilaterall y, I believe there are about 361 Points, not counting the Extra Points. So these would be examples of that practice, that commonali ty. That means we are one Point over, if we were going back to the Han Dynasty . Which Point are we going to get rid of to give us 360 Points ? Some people say that the 360 Points did not include the Ren and the D u . If that’ s the case, then what Points d o we have to add on to those 1 2 Meridians to come up wi由 360 Points? This is a n exerci se 出at some people have done to try to really get to understand some of the Points and their names .
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The Ben Cao is the same. You have 365 . Some people woul d actually argue there were also probabl y ori ginally 360: 1 20 Upper Grade, 1 20 Middle Grade and 1 20 Lower Grade herbs. We know that in Slzen Nang’s Ben Cao, they talk about the Upper Grade herbs as herbs that Nourish life. Some of these herbs are not traditionall y what we think of as Tonic herbs today. For example, Shi Gao, Gypsum, was an herb that was said to Nourish life. That is coming from an al chemical insight into using minerals. So, yes, Gypsum can probably Nourish l i fe when you get Gypsum after it has been sublimated, a fter it has been alchemicall y refined, because in Shen Nang’ s Ben Cao, they have di fferent grades of Gypsum . So while it is classified as an Upper Grade herb, it depends on what grade you got. There are shops that have alchemi cal furnaces, where people basically heated up the Gypsum to a certain temperature and then l et it cool down, buried i t in the earth, and they have manure, or what have you, being buri ed with i t, so that it goes through an al chemical process. A lot of times with alchemy, they use things that involve decay, because alchemy i s about death. It is about decay. So the only tradi tion that we still see today that probably still uses alchemi cal types of formul a tions or substances is Tibetan medi cine. That is probably the onl y one that we see wh ere these practices are sti ll being used tod ay . Remember, at least from my perspective, Tibetan medi cine really is the integration of Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine. It i s a combination of Indi a and China i nfluencing Tibet, so there is a combinati on of the two that develops into Tibetan medicine. In fact, one of the princesses in the 5th Century A .CE. married a Tibetan king. So there was already that rel ationship between China and Tibet being established very earl y on. So there was an infl u x of inform ation coming there, as well as inform ation coming from Tibet back to China. In any case, I just want you to know that the 1 20 herbs that they refer to are not just what we would think of as Tonic herbs. Yes, Ginseng is in there and that is probably one of the most popular among the Toni c herbs, but that is really not just the only one. The Middle Grade herbs are herbs that are used t。 ”supplement natur旷 ． Som e of these herbs were being described as being taken fresh . Some of these herbs were described as being taken dry . For exampl e, Angelica Sinensi s, Dang G u i, is rel ativel y toxic \vhen it is taken fresh . You would not take Da ng G u i out the earth and start eating it, even though there i s a mythology of someone who basical l y got a lot of vigor finding this root and eating it. This is the story of Da ng G u i . But Da n g G u i means, G u i m eans to return . So hi s vital i ty was returning . He was abl e to ward off, Dang means to ward off, diseases . So there is a myth about som eone finding a root and eating it and he was able to return b a ck to vitali ty and was able to ward off diseases, the name D a n g Gui. Techni cally, that woul d not have been true, because if you eat Dang G u i, raw, you would more probably get a disease than ward off a disease. So Dang G u i w a s one o f those things where they sped自cally talked about drying it for several days. Commentaries would actually come out and ask, "How m any days should you dry it？” and so forth. Certain things are said to increase in their effi cacy if they are dried longer and l onger and l onger. So drying is very important in Chinese medicine. They are not always talking about fresh herbs, because
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sometimes the noti on is that fresh herbs are m ore potent or more effective. I t’ s not necessarily true. For example, Wang Tao, the person I talked about whose text is consi dered th e first Moxibustion text, basically says that Moxa that is harvested in au tumn and allowed to dry for three years has the greatest efficacy in treating all diseases . We don’t usually have three-year Moxa today. So that would be an example where the drying period is very crucial to the efficacy of the herbs. That we see being described already in Shen Nong. H arvesting, when shoul d we harvest? Where do we find these plants and, in some cases, how long do we need to dry it? So these were herbs to ”supplement nature.” Dang G u i is in that category. That is why I mentioned Dang Gui. Lower herbs are u sed t。 ”treat diseases” . Some herbs that we would think of as rel atively neutral, in the old days was consi dered a Lower herb, like Bupluerum, Chai Hu, was consi dered a Lower herb. In fact, any time you see the word H u , there is going to be a bias against it, because Hu means b arbarians. Where are the b arbari ans? They were those nomadic tribes in the north . So whatever we found in those nom adic tribes in the north, we will call it of the Hu . Hu would mean that it is from those nomadic tribes, which again, in the Ta ng Dynasty, they actu al l y had a Materi a Medica wri tten describing the herbs of those b arbari ans, whi ch is called Hu, like Chai Hu, Ben Cao, the Hu Ben Cao . Like Hu Huang Lian, we know was an herb that came from the nomadic tribes and that is an herb that we don’t see in the Shen Nong ’ s Ben Cao until China begins to conquer the nomadic tribes during the Tang Dynasty . That’ s when we see the Tang Materia Medi ca would begin to have herbs like Hu Huang Li an, the Huang Lian， 由e Coptis, of those barbarians, Pi crorhiza， 由at' s Hu Huang Lian .
3.
Tao Hong Jing & his Shen Nong Ben Cao
Then Tao Ho ng Jing li ved from 452-536 A .CE., so he lives after the Han Dynasty . After the Hn n Dynasty, China basically goes into di fferent littl e states and then comes another unification of China. So the first unification occurred with Qin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor of China. The second begins to occur during what we call the S u i Dynasty . The S u i Dynasty is thi s period where we see people like Huang Fu Mi, with the /ia Yi Jing, The Systematic Textbook of Acupuncture, and you see Tao Hong Jing.
Tao Hong Jing was essenti ally a Daois t in the early part of hi s life and he converted to Buddhism in the later part of his life . Again, Bu ddhism is coming into China at thi s tim e. He became a reclusive much later on in li fe, devoting most of his studies to religious practices. Tao Hong Jing was actually one of these indivi du al s who w as really very highl y educated . He was not onl y good at medicine, we often think of him mostly for medicine, but he was also skilled in astronomy . He knew the geography of China very well . He did a l ot of field 甘ips and he was also what we woul d call an artisan, in Confucian l anguage. He was very good in music. He was a musician. He was a calligrapher. So he had a lot of interests and definitely he dabbled in m any different things .
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What he' s mostl y noted for i s Shen Nong’ s Ben Cao, whi ch became the domin ant text for stud ying herbal medi cine by the li terate cl ass u ntil the beginning of the Ta11g Dynasty . His book was basically the book that you would stu d y . He increased the list of herbs from 365 to 780 and now he gives more detailed in form ation regarding the Nature, that is thi s i d ea of " I s the herb warming or cooling？” That is the aspect relating to the Qi of the herb . That’ s cal l ed the Qi of the herb, the Nature . I t al so describes to a greater degree the Tastes of the herbs. That' s in the original Shen Nong ’ s Ben Cao, that it gives you the Qi and the Taste, but he gives more information about that. He also gives the l ocati on, we see in the early Ben Cao, and the harvesting . What he provides is just more detai l . Meridian associations are not provided. That doesn ’t develop until \Ve get into, not even the Tang Dynasty, really into the Song Dynasty is when we start to get， “Oh this herb goes to this Meri dian or goes to this Organ . ” That’ s a much later inventi on in terms of the Ben Cao history . But nevertheless, we have an overall i dea that something has a Nature in terms of temperature . We have som ething in terms of its Taste, which comes from the Five Element ideas, as Five Element theory is developing . We already saw where Sour comes from, where Sweet comes from . And that, by the way, doesn’t come from the Nei J i ng. That comes from the Yin Yang School . Remember, we talked about the Yin Yang School yesterday, that gave us the Five Attributes. Among those attributes, they gave the Five Tastes. So the Five Tastes can be traced back to the Yin Yang School and then we begin to see it being used in the Su 讥len, as well as the Ling Slzu . Because Tao Hong Jing gets converted to Buddhism in the later part of his life, there is a minor group of Chinese medi cal doctors who actually believe that the Shen No ng’ s Ben Cao has two versions from Tao Hong Jing. One of which reflects that he began to focus m ore on the spiritu al, the Shen aspect of the herbs than in the other versi on . Today, when you read his text, people believe 出at the two versions are overl apping . Wi th certain herbs it seems like everything is being described very physi call y, an d wi th other herbs, there seems to be more of a d escription of it in term s of spiritu al aspects, that it indu ces tranquility, that it helps t。 ”bri ghten the eyes ” . Here they don’t m ean physical l y ”brighten the eyes”， rather that you are able to have more clari ty of the eyes, to see spiritually more clearl y . So that to them was more of a Shen qual i ty that he i s adding to i t, So, they beli eve that he probabl y had two works and those two works became synthesized as one. That’ s among a small group of people. Some people believe that’ s all built in, that he did not have to become a Buddhist to have written about that. 4.
Sui Yao Xing Lun New Treatise on Herbs from Sui Dynasty
Then we go into the S u i Dynasty, where there is a new treatise being written. Again, this simpl y refers to S u i Yao X i ng L u n, the Herbs from the Sui Dynasty Treati se. And here, the important p art about this parti cu l ar Materi a Medica i s that n o t onl y does i t incl u d e the Nature, the Temperature a n d the Taste, but it begins to reall y g i v e us combinations o f herbs. Thi s is important because, contrary to what you might think, it is rare that we see, as we develop into a medical system, the use of singl e herb s . The use of single herbs is only
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consi dered appropriate primarily in preventati ve measures. That’s when we see these earlier texts describing herbs for preventative measures. If we go into Shen N01叹’s Ben Cao, we are looking at Upper Grade herbs, because as we sai d, Shen Nong was healthy . He was, or whoever represented Shen Non g , was foraging and eating these different plants. He was a healthy person . So he was seeing that certain things gave him m ore vitality. Certain things caused him to have diarrhea . So certain things were therapeu ti c, but for certain things he was trying to classify what are the thi ngs that are real l y good for the bod y . By the tim e we get to T a o H o n g Jing, who was a m edical practi tioner, he is now going to be classifying herbs based on their therapeuti c functi on . He i s not l ooking at what herbs will do for a heal thy person . He i s l ooking a t what herbs are going t o do for someone who is already i l l , which means that the functi ons those herbs are going to exert is going to be very di fferent than wi th a person who is healthy. Fu rtherm ore, now, in the Sui Dynasty Herbal, they are prescribing that herbs work best as combinations . That’ s the traditional belief, that Chinese medicine does not believe in single Points or singl e herbs. As a medi cal system, you are i nterested in the combinations, because when you have combinations, what you have are dynamics . Yes, herbs by themselves have a function, but you throw another herb in or you Needle another Point, and the two of them in interacti ng ,,vith each other, create, not only necessarily a synergistic effect, but they create a very interesting dynam i c . M aybe they Antagonize. Rem ember those terms that we talked about in herbal medi cine, that certain herbs Mutually Accentu ate . Certain herbs Mutually Prohibi t or Restrict or Enhance . That is understanding the dynamic combinations . As I said, it i s almost like i f you take a person and you put the person in a room and observe them, you can see certain things abou t the person, but you won't be able to see a lot, unless you put another person in the room wi th that person. You will see a lot more interesting quali ti es when you have the dynamics of two and maybe a crow d . But som etim es i f it gets too crowded, you can’ t reall y observe each person very carefully to see what is happening. And that’ s why recipes in the old days were very limited i n number, not necessari l y in d osage, but limited in numbers, because with limitati ons in numbers you can create greater predi ctability . That’ s why Shang Han Lun fo口nulas are rel atively small compared to some formulas of the Song Dynasty . Acupuncture recipes and combinations are rel atively small compared to some of the more Song Dynasty recommendations for protocols . So this is, to a greater degree because we see it in the Sui Dynasty Classics about combinati ons, m ost people believe i t’ s probably during the S u i Dynasty that people were more or less experimenting already with combi nations of herbs. De自nitely the Shang Han Lim uses herbal combinati ons, because they are herbal formulas. S lz a n g Ha n Lu 11 d oesn' t tell you to use one herb . It u ses herbal formulas. So what you have now are these combinations. You have also contraindications, because once you have combinations and you see adverse reactions, you need to figure out is it coming from this one herb or maybe the combinati on . So you start talking more about contraindicati ons, 1 02
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toxi city, ways of reducing toxici ty . Maybe the herb has to be boiled l onger or maybe certain shell s we know have to be boiled l onger for it to be more effective as calming agents, like the idea of rhubarb . Do I boil rhubarb in the l ast 1 5 minutes o f a decoction, Da H u a ng that i s, which we know would b e m ore Purging if I di d that? Or do I boil rhubarb with the entire formula, whi ch wou l d be more Blood Moving if I d i d that? So again, the difference in terms of the cooking time. Likewi se, we talked abou t that with acupuncture, also. If you look at an acupuncture Point, it gives you several Functions of an acupuncture Point. Remember, the ]ia Yi Jing is being written at the same time. So we have an herbal discussion . But also the ]ia Yi Jing, is an acupuncture descripti on that gives us Point combinations, that also means, while they don’ t tell you the time, there is the assumption that certain Points which have certain functions may only exert that function when it is retained for a certain period of time. If you retain it too short a time, you mi ght not get the best therapeutic effi cacy of 出at Point. So this is happening during the Sui Dynasty, reall y trying to fi gure out the processing of Points, the processing of herbs . This is another component that we see wi th this new Treatise of the Sui Dynasty .
5.
Xin Xiu Ben Cao
Newly Revi sed Herbal (659 A .CE.)
Then comes the Tang Dynasty . By the tim e we get into the Tang Dynasty, remember China during the Western Han was already going into these foreign countries and expanding, whi ch stops with the Eastern Ha n, but it begins to continue again wi th the Ta ng Dynasty . So with the Tang Dynasty com es the incl u sion or imported herbs from oth er countri es, incl u ding a lot of the resins from the Arab trade. The Sil k Road was established during the Western Ha n when the expansi on extends to the Arab countries. So already the Silk Road was being established in China . And in the Ta ng Dynasty, when they revamp, and they do the Tang Dynasty Herbal, whi ch they simpl y called the Newl y Revised Herbal, that i s the Xin Xiu Ben Cao . More popul arly i n Chinese li terature, they often refer to it as 出e Tang Ben Cao, the Tang Dynasty Ben Cao. It was completed in 659 A .C E . It took hvo years . 657 was when it was commissioned to be compiled. It was compl eted at 659 and incl uded in here are going to be things like Myrrh, Frankincense, the things that were coming into China from the Arab countries. That’ s not to say that Myrrh was not used pri or to the Tang Dynasty . W e saw it in Han Dynasty formul as, especially during the Western Han, because already the Sillι Road w a s establi shed . But to see it actually being described and written up in a Materia Medica, you see in the Tang Dynasty . S o there are a number of herbs that are included i n here. W e start t o l ook at Pu Gong Ying, dandelion, which appears during. the Tang Dynasty . So if you see a formula with d andelion, it would not have been back to the Han Dynasty . Pu Gong Yin g was an herb that we used in the Tang Dynasty. Isati s, especi ally the leaf of I sati s, we used the root, but we didn’t really start using the leaf of Isatis, Da Qing Ye, until the Tang Dynasty . So i n the Tang Dynasty, other parts of
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the pl ants began to be investigated . I t’ s no longer just one aspect of the plant. We began to look at the other aspects of the plant. Jin Yin Hua as a flower was being investigated now in the Ta ng Dynasty Herbal . J i n Y i n Hua, Lonicerae flowers, Honeysuckl e flowers, were being used in the Tang Dynasty . In terms of seeds, white mustard seed \vas being used in the Tang Dynasty, Bai ]ie Zi. And, interestingly enough, it is during the Tang Dynasty that we develop the theory about Phlegm and so we are l ooking for herbs that treat phlegm . White mustard seed Expels Phl egm . So again, this reflects some of the theories that are coming out. Another seed is Dong Gua Ren, Benincasae, was l isted in the Tang Dynasty . That’ s another seed that also deals with Phl egm . You don’t see it being used too much today for that, but it is an herb that deals with Phl egm . We think of it more for Draining Damp-Heat or Summer-Heat. But that is a Phlegm herb . So these were among some of the herbs that were being li sted in the Tang Dynasty and the herbs that were coming from foreign countries were now being put into the Tang Dynasty textbooks . The resins wou l d be the ones that come from the Arab worl d . Tumeri c, Jiang Huang, comes from the Arab countri es. That’ s in the Ta ng Dynasty Materi a Medica. Fennugreek, Hu Lu Ba, that comes from the Arabs. That goes into China . Fig trees begin to grow in China, coming from Persia, fi gs coming into China. Chinese call that the Happy Heart Fruit. So they had to come up with a name for that. They di dn’ t know what to call it. And their journals of their first impressi ons of Persi ans was that they were always smiling . So they called them the Happy, thi s must be the fruit that keeps them happy . So they call them Happy Heart Fru it. That’ s a common term th at we call figs. In the Tang Dynasty a lot of the furni ture comes from wood that was taken from Vietnam, which has a lot of Rosewood, so rosewood furni ture. Vietnam is also where a wood that was very intriguing to the Chinese was found . That became the basis of an incense during the Ta ng Dynasty : Aquil aria, Chen Xiang, whi ch they call Very Deep Fragrance. When I smell i t, I go into thi s deep meditation. Chen, as your Tai Ji teachers always tel l you, C hen , like to sink. So there is Aquil ari a, whi ch the Japanese really like . That became the basis of Japanese incense therapy . But A quil aria i s introduced to the Chinese during the Ta ng Dynasty, coming from Vi etnam . Again, they were mostly using Vietnam for the wood . Certain wood, when they burned them, exhibited a smell whi ch they found fascinating . So Chen Xiang became something that came from Vietnam . Lu Lu Tong comes from Vietnam . Li qui d ambaris, Lu Lu To ng, whi ch was used a lot in liniments, especi ally applying it after an acupuncture treatment or over Acpuncture Points, outsi de of Fu Zi. We often hear about Fu Zi as the major one, but in the Tang Dynsaty, they were using things like Lu Lu Tong, Li quidambaris. Sweet Gum, wou l d be the popul ar name for Liquidambari s . So the resin that comes from Sweet Gum would be applied on acupuncture Points . Lu Lu Tong means ” Roll, Roll, Penetrate”， kind of like Draino. Everything j ust gets drained out, Lu Lu
Tong. So that is the Ta n g Dynasty Herbal . It i s the first offi cial Chinese Pharmacopeia, under the direction of Su Jing, Li Ji and there were a lot of other people. This is an Imperi al Commission where a lot of herbalists worked on it
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and b asi call y they itemi zed approximately 850 herbs, adding more than 1 00 herbs to Tao Ho ng Jing ’ s version . Again, a lot of these additi onal herbs were herbs that were coming from forei gn countries, herbs that they now are further expl oring in terms of other parts of the same plants that they have been using, but not using other parts of the plants, and seeing elso they cou l d be used . For example, Isati s root was used already and now they u se Isatis leaf. We know that they were u sing Tri chosanthes frui t, and peel, and seed . But now in the Ta ng D ynasty i s when they start using Tri chosanthes root. So Tia n Hua Fen becam e something tha t was discovered in the Tang Dynasty . So if they wrote Tia n Hua Fen, you know that it would have been a formula from the Ta ng or after. It woul d not have pre-d ated that. So when you see the use of Trichosanthes in Zlzang Zlzong Jing' s formul as, which they do use in the Slzang Ha n L u n, it is not going to be the root. When they say Gua Lou, you know i t i s either going to b e the frui t, the peel o r the seed . This is the basis of the herbal formulati ons. The formulas that were being u sed during thi s peri o d of tim e primari l y com e from th e S h a ng Ha n Lun Tradi tion . The Shallg Ha ll Lu ll ’fradi tion dominates earl y Chinese medicine. It d oesn' t even real l y change in the Ta ng Dynasty, even thou gh in the Ta ng Dynasty, we start using some of the formulas that come m ost notably from S u n Si Miao . But i t is basically still Shang Han L u n oriente d . And the Slzang Han Lun approach is an approach that i s based on the Progression of di seases . 认That level is the di sease at? That' s the formula that you need to u se. So to a greater degree, once you understand the Shang Han L u n in term s of the herbs u sed in the Slzmzg Ha n Lun, you begin to understand pretty much the basi s of the Shen Nong’ s Ben Cao and basically the 200, or a littl e bit more than 200 herbs, that are used in the Slza71g Han Lzm Traditi on . So learning the Slzang Han Lun Traditi on automatically gives you a lot of the herbs that are in Slzen Nong’ s Ben Cao . C.
The Emphasi s on Preventati ve Medi cine
The l ast part of thi s secti on is the emphasis on preventative medicine. We tal ked abou t thi s earl i er. In Dao is m , they talked a l ot about the context of maintaining Survival . That was respirati on, digesti on and to a greater degree, self massage. That’ s where you get into the Interactive mode, and sleeping . In terms of medi cal l itera tu re, the earl i est medi cal li tera ture that emphasizes preventative medicine was by Zlzang Zlzong Jing . Whi l e Zlzang Zhong Jing is noted for writing his treatise on how to treat injury due to Cold, he nevertheless also talks about maintaining preventative measures. Some of them were j u st purely hygieni c measures . For example, in the Records of the Book of Ri tes or the Records of the Rites, a Confucian textbook, it says that you should wash your hands five times a day. It says that you shoul d wash your hair every three days, and you shoul d take a bath every five days. So they actually tell you how many times you need to engage in the process of m aintaining good hygiene. In the Book of Rites, they al so talk about times that you should be cleaning out your well, that the well s need to be cleaned out too, especi ally in the Spring. They say th at in the Spring, Yang Qi begins to rise. Things that are latent, things that are hi dden begin to come out. So they say 出at in the Spring, wi th allergies and all
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that, that’ s where all these Pestilent Factors, that term Pesti l ent Q i is u sed in Confu cian l anguage. During that period of time, Pestilent Factors com e out of the wells . You should start to clean your wells just before the Spring . So that is another hygienic recomm endati on that we see. And they say that if you don’t, what happens is that you can easily catch what they call Yi, epidemics, that we mentioned earlier.
Zh a ng Zhong Jing essenti ally talks more about dietary issues. Zhang Zhong
Ji ng i s the one that says not to eat raw meat or even drink raw milk, because that is going to lead to worm s . That term, Chong 品 is used . It is this observation with any flesh that decays, you see maggots growing out of that, Cho ng. This is
the word . The Chinese like trinities, The Three Openings, the Three Worm s, so thi s is the concept rel ated to the Three Worms and they see the worm s are associ ated with grains. Thi s is why in Daois m, they 甘y to tell us to avoid grains, especially if you are practi cing asceti c practices. The other component that is often associated with the Worms, in term s of food, is usually things that are raw in terms of meat and in terms of milk, which is why, to a great degree, becau se of these sta tem ents, the Chinese never really devel oped a milk drinking culture. Part of it was medi cal restri ctions where they say, ＇ ’Don’ t drink the raw milk.” Just use the milk for other purposes, so it i s often cooked, or used as cu rd . So that is the context that we see in the Chinese culture. In any case, Sun Si Miao is defini tely going to be the major one . In fact, if one were to ask what is his biggest contribu tion to the fi el d of medicine, it’ s not necessari l y hi s textbook as it rel ates to Chinese medi cine, but hi s di etary recommendations and, more importantly, dietary combinations . Do not combine certain foods; it will lead to certain types of di seases . He says do not have bananas and turnips together. Bananas and turnips will l ead to a di sruption of the Urinary Bladder, causing eventu ally what we call Lin Syndrome, s甘angury, I beli eve is the term tha t they u sed i n the mod ern transl ati on, Strangury Syndrome, aggravated by bananas and turni ps. That might not be as common in the West. Bananas are common, though not as common in China, but turnip is very common in Chinese cul ture. They eat turnips quite a lot. If you look at what happens when the empire moves South, that’ s where bananas are going to be consumed and with bananas and turnips, that’ s a common combination among the Chinese household s, to have something like that. He mentions not having something that is common in the West, with the good old hamburger: beef and oni ons . He sai d that beef and onions will l ead to parasi tes, G u . So that’ s a Sun Si Miao correla tion. And this is something that we commonl y see. That’ s ,,vhy if you ever went to a Chinese restaurant, one dish that you know evolved in America and did not come from Chinese cuisine is a dish known as Pepper Steak. If you go to a Chinese restaurant and you order Pepper Steak, where they give you peppers and onions and beef, that’ s not a Chinese dish. That was i nvented in the West, with the railroad workers coming into this coun廿y and they were opening their Chinese restaurants . That’ s an example of something 出at you typi cally do not find, beef and onions in Chinese dishes. You might find that in Chinese restaurants now, because they have been influenced by 出e West. So if you go to China, you might see that now, but that is a Western
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influence. That’ s a S u n Si Miao restri cti on . S u n Si Miao comes up with a lot of things that are essentially warnings against food combinations. Obviously, there are those of u s who don’t listen and consequ ently after the Ta ng Dynasty, there is going to be the invention of a ca tegory of herbal m e d i ci n e that we never saw in the M ateri a Medi ca, dealing w i th Food Stagnation . Herbs to remove Food Stagnation come after the Tang Dyn asty for those of us who do not pay attenti on to dietary constraints . So that is not a category that we see in the Ben Cao . So you start to see herbs like Crataegus, Shan Zlza. You see herbs like Raphani, Lai Fu Zi, in terms of formul as, that i s . They appear in the B e n Cao as a n herb, b u t they are not focusi ng o n Food Stagnation. Like Crataegus would be u sed for Congealed Bl ood . Slzan Zlza woul d be u sed for th at. Raphani would be used to Expel Phlegm . That’ s the kind of use that we are thinking about. We don’t say， “Oh i t’s for Food Stasi s . ” Now we start thinking about these herbs for people who don’ t listen o r don’ t pay attention to medical advice, j u st like western medi cal doctors getting upset that you are eating highly fatty foods and you are not concerned abou t th e chol esterol . In any case, Sun Si Miao definitely talks about diet and Dao Yin . Dao Yin i s a term that appears already in the Su We n. I n fact, i t i s a term that appears in Chapter 1 of the Su Wen . Dao Yin l ater on became known as Nei Gong . And then, even though it doesn’t really mean the same thing, in the 20th Century, we coi ned a new term for thi s cal l e d Q i G o n g . Q i G o ng is a 20th Century terminology . If you read old wri tings of the 1 9th Century, they wouldn’t use the term Qi Go ng . So thi s is the early evolu tion. Dao 等 means to guide and Yin 引 means to l ead, to guide and lea d . So you are ki nd of guiding and leading the Qi of your body as you stretch and you move the body. Dao Yin u tilizes these early exerci ses that ,,ve had. S u n Si λtfiao advocates it. So already it \Vas being practi ced, just not as regularly, or by as many people. So there are many forms of Dao Yin exercises that \Ve know already occurred during the Tang D ynasty. And then, peopl e later on began to observe that after y ou do these exercises, you did not really take time out. So they start to say, "\Vell, these are not just physical exerci ses, you know . You should really take time to be more aware of the effect of these exercises after they have been done . ” And that became the term Nei Gong. Nei Gong today means other things, but this is the idea that Nei Gong says that we are doing these exercises, and that you are taking tim e to feel what it does internally. You are putting effort internally and seeing what it does to the body . So what you are really doing at the end of these exercises i s a form of meditation, which i s something we don’ t see a lot of times. Even in modern practi ces, people who do Tai Ji, are doing a form od Dao Yin . They are definitely guiding the Qi, stretching their body and all that, but at the end, they go back to their franti c lifestyle. They don’ t take time off to meditate and see what the Qi Gong or the Tai Ji or whatever it i s they do, has done for the b o d y . That' s known as Nei G o ng . This was a term that began to be more popularized in the Song Dynasty, that I’m doing Nei Gong, which m eans you are doing Dao Yin . 1 07
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And then lastly, in terms of S u n S i Miao, this i s also a period of tim e that they put a l ot of emphasis on self-massage. So at thi s peri od of time, we know that there is an increase in the descriptions of massage. But, more importantly, it i s during the Ta ng Dynasty that we see greater descriptions about Needling techni ques. So far, what we talked about in terms of acupuncture has been that the practi ce of acupuncture gave us the issue of depth, they gave us direction, they gave u s time, or at least we start thinking about those things. They g ave us order, the order of Points that we need to do. They gave us Point combinati ons to some degree . We haven’t really explored that in depth yet. But they didn’t really tell u s how and what we should do with the Needle itsel f. Yes, the Cl assic says De Qi, and yes, there are some ideas abou t Contra lateral Needling Above and Below, and Needling front and back that we see in th e Ling Sim . We defi ni tel y have that description . And the Ling Sim even gives us some primi tive Needling techniques, but there is not really much description about Needling techniqu e . If you are going to emphasize massage at a time when acupuncture is already being developed as a modality of healing, just think of some of the basic massage techni ques that you are learning, or that you are doing for your body . Remember, in terms of massage, i t is known as A n Mo . Some people have trademarked that and call i t Anma, but the term i s A n 按 An means to press and maybe the Pin Yin i s Mo 摩 ， whi ch means to touch . So A n Mo was the term that was used in the Ta ng Dynasty . The earlier term is known as An Qiao 按 椅 . That i s i n the Su Wen , Chapter 1 of the Su Wen where they talk about Dao Y巾， the second word they talk about, I mean Dao Yin is the Q i Gong and An Qiao is the massage. An, again, is the same An as to press. Qiao means to support. You are pressing to support your body . Here, they are actu ally talking abou t two massage techniques, to touch and to press . So that is kind of \vhat you are doing, remember, in the ol d days, probing and touching. And I’m pressing here, tou ching there and pressing . That’s what you are doing, You are probing . That is this technique, touching and pressing . That’ s An Qiao, b u t with your hands, I’m massaging. So to a greater degree, you are doing Acupressure. That is what you are reall y doi ng . With the Tang Dynasty came discussions about other techni ques. As some of you know, techniques like Tu i 推 . Today we call Chinese massage Tu i Na . Again, that i s a 20th Century term, j u st like Qi Gong is a 20th Century term, Tu i Na is a 20th Century term . Tu i 推 means to pu sh and Na 拿 means to grasp . So, two other techniques. And again, there are a l o t . There are basi cally, if you read Cla ssical writings anywhere from 1 2 to as m any as 25 techniques of massage. And the four techniques that we mentioned are among these. Now, if I am, let’ s say, Na, grasping, grasping requires that I go down to something. Let’s say I go down and then I lift up and then I go down, and then I lift up, I go down and I lift u p . I follow . That’s the di fference between Na and Ni. Ni means to pinch . Pinching, as I pinch an area, my hands release. That’s Pinching, when someone pinches you, they release. Na, I lift and then I release, I l i ft and then I release, so I’m following the contours as I’m going up and down. Na, imagine I go down and then I come up, I go down, I come up, Lifting and Thrusting is the 1 08
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Needle representation of the Na technique . That’ s a Na technique that you are doing. That’ s the Li fti ng and Thrusting whi ch is a techni que that we see being described by the time you get to the Tang D ynasty . Now we are looking more at massaging the body, and then at the sam e tim e also seeing how that coul d be integrated into acupuncture. Just as you can look at the techni que of Ca . Ca 擦 means to scrub. So i t i s a circular movement where you are trying t o exfol i ate. You are trying t o reall y get something . . . i n Chinese, Ca refers t o when you are cleaning something, you are going like thi s, exfoli ating and moving . A lot of times, they talk about doing i t in a circular fashi on. So now you are taking the Needle and you are going i n a circul ar fashi on . You are rotating the Needle, 'vhi ch i s a process that, like the m assage that i s exfoli ating, i s Releasing the Exterior, circul ar techni que Releases the Exteri or. That means if I want to induce sweati ng, I'm going to Needle Points that Promote Sweating by Need l i ng i t in a Circular techni qu e . It’ s not going to be Lifting and Thrusting anymore. If I w ant to use LI-4, l et’s say you use th at as a TC孔1 Point to Release the Ex teri or, LI-4 requires a Circu l ar techni que, whi ch later on, all generations after that, whenever they say, use LI-4 to Promote Sweat, they mean Needling it with a Circul ar technique. So that i s already built i n ; you understand what techniqu e w i l l promote certain functi ons. Just like if I say, "Use LI-4 to Open the face or the head that it Commands." You are not going to be using a Circul ar techni que, because that’ s not the quali ty of what LI-4 wants, in terms of the message that you w ant to give to it when you Needle the Point to Open the hea d . To Open the head . . . let’ s say I have a headache and I am u sing Ll-4 to get ri d of m y head ache. Sweating doesn’ t necessarily get ri d of i t, unless you think i t i s due to Wind-Cold or something like that, and then you want to sweat it out, bu t what you w ant to do i s draw that out of the body. Li fting and thru sting is a techni que that you might use to Open up the head for LI-4 . Let’ s say you are using LI-4 to Clear Heat. Clearing Heat in the ol d days vvould have been very simpl e . You Bled the Point. You Bleed i t and i t Clears Heat. But now, let’s say peopl e are becoming a l i ttle more squeamish. People are not coming to see Acupun cturi sts as much, m aybe because they heard abou t all these Bleeding sessi ons. So you w ant to duplicate a techni que that will help to minimize, or at least doesn’t seem to be as i ntense with the blood . So you try to create a techni que. Unfortunatel y they reall y didn’t find a techni que that helps to Clear Heat outside of Bleeding . So what happens now i s we start to devel op i nstruments that are more gentle, Seven Star H ammers, Plum Blossom Needles during the Ta ng Dynasty . So what we are seeing is the invention of techniques, thi ngs that are tryi n g to m ake it more gentl e . Although, not necessarily for some people. I guess Plum Bl ossom is not as gentle as Lancing, but that was the idea. What you are seeing i s that when you are l ooking at acupuncture, a number of a cupuncture techniques real l y were i n resonance wi th massage techniques . We cou l d even go backw ards and say, that if massage developed into acupuncture, because whenever you have pain, you massage or you tou ch a
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Point, and the way you touch begins to be developed into a technique, maybe that was what developed into acupuncture techniques. So this is the notion, that there i s a dual process happening. As I become more interested in my body and massaging my body, I’m going to be interested in developing more techniqu es for acupuncture, as wel l . And I’m only listing two of the common techniques wi th a cupunctu re, Li fti ng and Thrus ting . I’m talking about the Circular technique. I can take your body and j ostle your body, and this is a very common technique that we have in massage. So what do you do with the Needle? You shake the Needle. ”Shaking” is another techni que . And what happens when you shake that Point? What it does is bring more bl ood to an area . So this has a great abili ty to Invigorate Blood . Or, to really get the Bl ood to move, I can slap a surface area, or a Point. That means I can hol d the Needle and tap the handl e of the Needl e . Those are all acupuncture Needling techniques, and massage techniques too, just that i t’ s very finite now . Instead of doing it with your whole hand, your finger i s doing it. You are Tapping the Needle, while one hand u su ally holds onto the Needle. That becomes a way of further Invigorating the Bloo d . So now we can d ifferenti ate which technique provi des the greater intensity . By jostling an area, yes, I am getting the Blood to flow . I’m following the fl ow . But if I sl ap an area, greater vibrati ons are fel t, so now we say， ”Oh, this Moves Blood . This slapping really Invigorates Blood . ” The nomenclature changes . Moving Bl ood is l ess intense than Invigorating Blood . When we start doing 出at, what’ s going to happen now? The medical language is going to start changing. So the Tang Dyn asty is paving the way for what i s going t o happen when we get to the Song Dynasty, where now we look at herbs and say that thi s herb Moves Blood, and thi s herb Invi gorates Bl ood, because nm-v we are fine tuning everything that is developing as a modality. Question: I’m curi ou s hmv much evidence there i s for, in the case of Sun Si Miao, these four modalities, bodywork, acupuncture, herbs, and cooking, clearly they can be combined, but are these practi ti oners d oing both bodywork and acupuncture at the same time? Ans\ver: Ri ght, especi ally because Sun Si Miao is the clinician who i s most famou s for the i d ea tha t for medici ne to b e m ost effecti ve, i t has to be comprehensive. What he was trying to do was bri dge the gap between what he saw was a clear dichotomy between people who were j u st Acupuncturi sts and peopl e who were j u st herbalists . S h a n g H a n L u n practi tioners were mostly herbalists. Those coming from another traditi on, namely that of Hua Tuo, were prim arily acupuncturi sts. And S u n Si Miao says that rather than have thi s bickering going on behveen the herbalists and the acupuncturi sts, why don’ t we integrate m e d i cine as a comprehensive modal i ty . Because S u n Si Miao, in subsequent generations was so respected, at that point, we see people who were coming from an herb alist traditi on now try to come up with acupuncture equivalents to the herbal strategies. So it is only after, in the latter part of the Tang Dynasty, that we see Slzang Han Lun practitioners giving acupuncture Point suggestions for Tai Yang stages, Shao Yang and so forth. And, likewise, where we 110
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see people who w ere a cupunc turi sts u sing herbal form u l a s to do what, tradi tionally wou l d have been an acupuncture strategy . And 5 1 1 11 Si M ia o i s responsible for that. Furthermore, he i s saying that acupuncture a n d herbs are not enough . Preventative medi cine is even more i mportant. And that is why people need to empower themselves by d oing Qi G o 1叹， by doing Dao Yin, by l earning about diet and nutrition, but, more importantly, m aking sure they don’ t have improper diet in terms of improper combinations, and, l astl y, learning how to massage themselves. By doing that, he is really making the movement become not onl y integrative, but creati ng where one movement, one modality can contribute to another. And from 出ere, those modalities that are actually going to become much greater, because herbal influence to acupuncture will m ake the acupuncture theory greater and acupuncture theory to herb al theory will make it greater and you can see now why herbali sts start talking abou t the Meri dians that they are going to enter, whi ch comes later on . All of this is due to Sun Si M iao’s i nfluence. He i s defini tely one of the Gods of Chinese Med i cine. So it comes from him . Question : I h a d just a qui ck question about one o f the Needle techni ques you mentioned, the Circular Needl e technique that was Releasing the Exterior, and I guess later on we see that there is difference betvveen the clockwise and counter clockwise movement for Di spersion and Toni fication, and I was just \vondering when that came up and who came up with that. Answer： ＼月Vell, Ci rcular techniques i n relationship to Tonifi cation and Di spersal, is already part of the Na n Jing S chool . So already in the Ha n Dynasty, there is this i dea of Needling in relationshi p to going cl ockwise or counter-clockwi se, where clockwise is often associ ated with Bu, Tonifi cation, and counter-clockwise is often related to Xie, whi ch means to Drain . Bu t thi s notion here is not the same as the Circular techni que in relationship to Release. Because to Release, while we talked abou t Circular techni que, to Release relates to cycles. So what they really do i s, when you Needle someone, l et’ s say you are N eedli ng LI-4 to Release, what you woul d be doing is you woul d be Needling in a Circular fashion and then counting. It is almost like 9 circl es, 1 -2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 and then they stop and they do that again . So it is a conti nuous pattern of numbers. And usually it is an odd number, because odd represents Yang and what you are trying to stimulate, to a greater degree, is Yang Qi or, in particular, \Ve would say Wei Qi. Also, this Circular techni que d iffers from the above in that this Circular techni que is done Superfici ally. So there is also that difference. 1月Vi th regard to the Circular techni que, where this parti cular informati on helps, it is because we are using Circul ar technique to Release, relative to where the Point is located . In the center, going counter-cl ockwi se, or going up and away from the center (on the bilateral Meri dians), is considered Di spersal, and going up and toward s the center woul d be consi dered Tonifi cation. In other words, this clockwise and counter-clockwise for Tonificati on and Dispersal, only works if i t i s one the mi dline, be it on the anteri or or posterior midline. Bu t if you are looking at a Point that i s bilateral, one will be clocbvi se and one will be counter-clockwise, where you are Dispersing in both cases. Basi cally with this
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one, what you would be doing is you count, let’ s say if the person finds that 9 is too intense, you might go to the 3. 1 -2-3 stop, 1 -2-3 stop, 1 -2-3 stop, until the person starts to sweat. At that point, you would stop Needl ing . So real l y you are engaging constantly until the person begins to perspire. And some of you know, there are Points to stop sweating, too. But basicall y LI-4 in i ts original form, one of its major functions therapeutically is to Promote Sweat, Han, which is one of the earliest Cl assical techni ques that we have. Let’ s fini sh up that l ast statement that is p art of our discussion on Preventative Medi cine . That discussion relates to the i dea of Liu 瘤 . Liu is a term that we see prim arily being talked about by Chao Yuan Fang . Chao Yuan Fa ng was a practi tioner who lived in the 7th Century and Chao Yua n Fang is noted for writing a famous textbook on the eti ology, the causes and symptoms of di seases . His book was basically u sed primarily since the time he wrote it, for th e rem ainder of Chinese history, when you wanted to look up a p arti cu l ar symptom and really get a general sense of what you believe is causing it. Chao Yua n Fang begins to u se this term L巾， which acupuncture textbooks frequently translate as scrofu l a . I j u st want you to realize that the etiology of that is said to be coming from a food, that the underlying cause of it is that you ate something that was contaminated and, as a resul t, it caused these swelling to take place. That term could refer to goi ter. It is often associated wi th being in the area of the throat, because they see it as something that originates in the Stomach, that due to something you ate and the body is trying to push some kind of contamination up and out. As a result, it can cause a l ump on the breast as it is going up and out. It can cause a lump in the throat. So this is a concept that they associate with bad food . Sun Si Miao is also going to take this concept and essentially talks about bad food that eventually becomes Phl egm . So the introdu ction of this concept that you see in acupuncture books, that you see in medical literature, really comes from the discussion on Preventative Medi cine and contaminants. Chao Y u a n Fa ng basically blames it on eating melons . As some of you know, even in Western nutrition, melons sl ow down di gestion anywhere up to three hours. So if you had cantaloupe or honeydew after your meal, you are slowing down your digestion. If you slmv down your digesti on, you have fermentation; you have D ampness from a Chinese Point of view. That becom es a terrain for parasites. Cantaloupe or honeydew would not have been that popul ar in Chinese culture, but they did have a lot of watermelon. It’s a little smaller in China than the ones we see here, but they have watermelon. So they associ ate melons as being things that eventually, becau se they are very col d, diminish Stomach Fire and tha t’ s their image of why it cau ses things to ferment. Melons are one of the Col dest of the frui ts. Chao Yuan Fang essentially bl ames it on that. S u n Si Miao actually blames it on other things besides just melons. But that i s where thi s concept of Luo originates. In the Classi cs, we don’ t really see this. \Vhat I mean when I say Classics, relative to that period of time, everything else is going to be consi dered Cl assical . The terms that we see includes Accumulati on, Ji 精 . We see Jin 瘾 ， what some books translate as the Conglomerations. We see word s like Shan 痴 ， whi ch is often transl ated as some type of herni a, some type of stone. These are the common term s that we 1 12
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see associated wi th Accumulati ons, Stagnation . And, what we see when they talk more about dietary things, they begin to introduce thi s idea of Luo. This is a term th at comes pri m ari l y duri n g thi s period of ti me where Preventative measures, dietary measures are talked about a l ot. There is one menti on of i t in the Su Wen, but it i s not a popul ar terminology. Now people are trying to give the eti ol ogy of it. If anything, you see more of the other terms being l isted. V.
Prominent Figures & Their Contributions
That brings us to the last part and that is during this whole peri od of early Chinese Medicine and the devel opment of Chinese Medi cine, there are a number of notable individuals whose i deology contributes to the devel opment of Chinese Medi cine and these individuals incl u d e people that we associ ate with herbal medicine as well as people that we associ ate with acupuncture and those that are associ ated with both. A.
Chu n Yu Yi, Cang Gong (21 5 - 1 67 B.C.E.)
, also known as Ca ng Gong The first person i s Ch u n Yu Yi �享 于 意 合 公 . Cang means granary and Gong means grandfather. Basically he was the keeper of a granary, one of the Imperial granaries, he was one of the granary keepers . His name is Clllm Yu Yi. He and the person after him B ia n Que are i n d i vi d u a l s who are li sted by Shi Ma Qia n . Slz i Ma Qia n 司 局 退 is consid ered the grand historian. H e would b e the equivalent to Herodotu s of the Greeks. He was the historian of this era. He basi call y talks about the people that live prior to hi s existen ce. He lived in the Ha n Dynasty, Si Ma Qia n . In Si Ma Qian’s history or histori cal records, as we call it, hi s Shi Ji 史 记 , he mentions Ch u n Yu Yi and Qin Yue Ren . Qin Yue Ren is also popul arly known as Bia11 Que, the person who supposedly has wri tten the Nan Jing. So we don’ t really know too m u ch abou t these persons, except from the histori cal records . And in the historical records, Si Ma Qian mentions Chu n Yu Yi and what in particular is associated with him was that C/nm Yu Yi kept medical records . He gave the name of the pati ents. He gave the disease that the person had, what he believed was the nature of the disease, the cause of the disease, and subsequently, the treatment, the progress, and the prognosi s of the conditi on over time. Si Ma Qian is also the person who essenti ally writes down that Chu n Y u Yi cl assified that there are Four Techni ques o f Diagnosis, the ones that we often think of today, Looking, Li steni ng and Smelling, Hearing and Asking, and lastly, Palpation. It is important to understand that the order of these really has a certain importance, because some people in hi stori cal writings will specifi cally say， ”After the person speaks, then you shou l d take the Pulse. ” Some people would s ay， ”No, after you l ook, you should start taking the Pulse.” So there is a general order as for the diagnostic ritual that you are going to engage in, because basi call y what you are d oing is y ou are d em onstrati ng a ri tu al . That i s Confuci anism . Even though you might not realize i ι anything that you do i n a medi cal sense that indoctrinates your patient into the practice of what you are 1 13
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doing i s considered a ri tu al . If you are a clinician who wears a lab coat, the fact that you pu t on the l ab coat m eans that you are engaging in the ritual of saying th at you are a medical practitioner. Your patient sees that lab coat and they get indoctrinated into the system . A pati ent might not care, bu t if a patient doesn' t see you in a l ab coat, their interaction might be a little different than i f you were wearing a l ab coat. So that is a Confucian noti on. Then what you are d oing i s you are going through the formali ties . Y o u are asking questions, you are taking the Pul se . That’ s a ri tu al . Some peopl e would say, "All of those are superfi ci al aspects, that some people simply know by intuition . ” That would be m ore of a Daois t orientati on to say that. That i s, if you go beyond the ritual, that’ s when you really know . To study what study does not give you, that’ s a concept that we see. But th e idea of thi s ritual i s th at what you are working w i th four components. Just thi时（ of Looking, Listening and Hearing . Let’ s say Looking in term s of l ooking at the complexion or l ooking at color. It cou l d be about Li stening, I mean I shoul d say, Smelling and Li stening 'vould be all part of this component, and what you are 甘ying to elicit is their overall voice, their overall strength of their voice. It coul d be in a TCM pattern . It coul d be a 认Torsley or Five Element pattern. VVhat’s the quality of their voice and so forth . Then comes Asking and l astly comes Palpation . What you are really l ooking at is that you first get an impression (Looking) of your client and then you get 出e expression (Listening & Hearing) of your client and then you get the suppression (Asking) of your client and then you get the rep ression (Palpation) of your client. That’ s why it i s in that order. Nowadays, if you are working alone, you are probably the one to answer the phone of your pati ent calling . You get a general impression, listening on the phone, of this person, you have an image already . And that image might be fal se. When they come in, you actu ally see them and they are actually totally different than your image. But that is going to be the impression you have. You see them walking in, they l ook frai l . You mi ght already superimpose on that frailness that you are going to expect to find deficiencies. So that’ s what they think of as Looki ng . Then the person opens their mouth and they start speaking. And we Li sten and nmv we are Hearing them express themsel ves beyond their appearance . So that is another dimension of diagnosis . \.Yhat you may find is that what they are expressing may not be what you really feel 自 由e necessary or pertinent inform ation to do your di agnosis . And that’ s why you have to Ask questions. It d oesn’ t have to be the 1 0 Questions. The 10 Questions, rem ember, at this time of Chinese Medi cine, has not been invented yet.. The 1 0 Questi ons that we use in TCM comes in the M ing Dynasty . So it’s not, "Tell me about sweating, tell m e about chills and fever. ” You are really asking questi ons that pertain to informati on that you think your client might not be telling you . That’ s the Asking parameter. You are looking at the things that you think they have an answer for, but they are not consciously revealing, because they are suppressing it perhaps. And then, whatever they are not saying, whatever I’m Asking, and I’m not being able to find out, then I’m going to take their Pulse or palpate them and get what exactly is being repressed, what is being denied, what is being 1 14
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hi dden, that you can now try to resonate into and find through palpation, be it manual palpati on or Pul se palpation or whatever i t i s that involves touching the Essence of that being that you call your patient. So thi s is the Asking aspect and you definitely want to see it as not just a clinical skill or clini cal tool, that it was really about ways of understanding, that i nformati on can come in many forms and not to be mi sgui ded by the impression, because sometimes the impression is very misguiding or misl eading . What you reall y w ant to do i s be abl e to sift through alJ of that and come up wi th your diagnosis, whatever that naming i s . Remember the i nterest i n categories. Xun Yu Yi i s the person that w a s sai d to have been associ ated with the Four Di agnosti c Aspects, Si Zlzen . At least Si Ma Qia n wri tes that he talked about these parameters of Looking, Listening and Smell ing, and Hearing and Aski ng, and Palpating.
Cll lm Yu Yi i s also mentioned in S u n S i M iao ' s writi n g . Sun S i M iao menti ons him in his Qian Jin Yao Fang, the Formulas that are Worth 1 000 Pounds of Gold, as it is sometimes translate d . What he m enti ons, Ch un Yu Yi, is that he treated people by doing Moxibusti on and that he used Bai Hui for treating Dian Kuang, mania and wi thdrawal . He basi cally menti ons him, that he applied nine cones on Bai Hu i for Dian Kuang. Some of you mi ght be wondering, "Why that Point？” or " What’ s the moral of the story？ ” Well, whether it happened or not, Sun S i Miao d idn’ t want to take credit for that, or he wants to throw in a case from thi s person . The idea here i s that even up to the Tang Dynasty, the etiology th at we associate with di seases i s pri m arily d ue to something that challenges Yang Qi. The notion i s that Yang Qi ri ses to the top of the head and, rather than thinking today of Heat as causing a disturbance in Shen, we often tend to think of Col d, that Cold can restri ct Ya ng Qi from moving to the top of the head . As a result, we can have severe Shen Disturbances, as defined by the term Dian Kuang. This i s further supported by the Ling S h u that says Dian Kuang begins with the eyes, what we would think of as UB- 1, which i s Tai Ya ng with Wei Qi. That Wei Qi may be in a state of exuberan ce. Maybe Wei Qi i s exuberant, causing me to be manic or Wei Qi or Yang Qi i s in a state of not reaching the top, causing me to be depressive . We know that if i t is m anic, where there is a tremendous amount of Wei Qi, what we need to do is ventilate. We need to get 出is Wei Qi to come out. And if there is not enough \!\lei Qi, then \Ve need to concen甘ate this Yang Qi back i nto the head, for the depressive state . The notion here i s of l ooking at Yang Qi, the most Yang number in Daois m is nine. S u n Si Miao was a Daois t. The most maj or component to deal with Cold i s Moxa. The highest Point that Yang Qi goes to is Bai Hu i, D U-20 . And, we know that Moxa can be Di spersing, that’ s called
Blowing Moxa, when I am Dispersing. That means that as the cones are burning, I’m blowing on the cones so that the heat that is opening up the Meridian is now coming out and ventil ating outward . Or, I can keep the Moxa where it burns down . That wou l d be Toni fying . This is the rati onale of why using Moxibustion at DU-20 helps to deal with Dian Kuang. Do not be misguided by just thinki ng of Moxa as being a \i\Tarming therapy . It is al so a therapy that while it is Warming, it can be Dispersing, using Yang to move Yang. 115
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He m entions this as a treatment that was used by Ch u n Yu Yi. What I’m going to be suggesting to you i s that along with Zhang Zhong Jing and Hua Tuo, these are going to be the three indivi duals who create the early theoretical systems of Chinese Medi cine. They are going to be the three primary individuals of Early Medi cine, where they come up with the theory about how to deal with pathology in Chinese Medicine . Chun Yu Yi is associated wi th the notion that the basi c way of dealing with diseases is an Anatomical approach. Keep in mind the time peri od that they come in. Ch u n Yu Yi is basically trying to work within arousing Yang Qi to the head to deal with getting ri d of Exogenous Pathogenic Factors. Zhang Zhong Jing, i s also going to develop a theory . His theory i s also rel ated to Ya ng Q i . In hi s ca se, Zhang Zhong Jing is not only about Releasing thi ngs from the head, but Releasing from the hea d and the four limbs, at least for Yang pathology and Expelling Exogenous Pathogeni c Factors . As we see with hi s herbal form u l ati ons, these are things to Rel ease the Exteri or through Sweating, but also thi ngs that are Opening up the region of the head and the four limbs, whi ch essenti ally connect through Du-14. From an Acupuncturi st’ s point of view, Zhang Zhong Jing is not as interested in Du-20. He is more interested in
Du-14. Hua Tuo i s going t o say， ”Well, a l l o f these theories are interesting. They seem to suggest that pathology moves from the head, or the four limbs, but i t seems t o suggest that i t i s coming from above, and m oving down bel ow . ” Basi cally we are saying it is coming from Wind. It i s coming from Col d . These are Celesti al forces from Heaven . So it shou l d come from above. That' s the impression. But Hua Tua noted something quite different. He believed that most of these people got sick, not from Celesti al forces, but from water, rain, what we wou l d call D am pness tod a y . Remember, w h a t is the cul ture ? It is an agri cultural soci ety, and what are you doing? You are going to be doing a lot of irri gation or planting the grains. Most likely, the maj ority of the people are going to be working in these grain fiel ds, with their feet constantly stepping in water. And, a l ot of times, this w ater is going to be col d w ater. So again, he' s buying into the idea of Ya ng Qi. They are all interested in thi s idea of Ya ng Qi. But, according to Hua Tuo, thi s cold water that you are stepping in is going to get absorbed through the legs and it is going to travel upward and as it travel s upward, it si going to affect the Ya ng Qi, not so m u ch above, but bel ow, as it begins to, as Col d, Damp Climati c factors, block the m ovement of Ya ng Q i coming ou t from Ming Men, from D u -4. I t blocks the Yang Qi coming out from Ming Men, which is going to be coming out through San Jiao. That’ s the Nan Jing theory . 认＇hat happens is that it doesn't fully reach the area of the Bl adder Slz u Points, which woul d then not give enough Qi t o the Organs, b u t also part o f the i dea of i t blocking can be seen as a response pattern to prevent the Cold from entering into the Organs. So what happens is that prior to getting to the Organs, the area close to the spine begins to tighten up. Sun Si Miao later on would call these H u a Tu a J ia Ji Points, giving credit to H u a T u a for his idea. H u a Tua obviously doesn’t call them Jia Ji Points . Sun Si Miao calls it that. Hua Tua was the first persoη to use the term that what happens whenever you get any Exogenous condi tion i s that you are going to have Ah-shi Points. So Ah-Shi was u sed by Hua Tuo, but he refers specifi call y to Ah-Shi Points that were found next 1 16
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to the spine. So Hua Tuo is now presenting a theory 出at comes from bottom up, while Clnm Yu Yi and Zlzang Zhong Jing are talking abou t theory that comes from top to bottom . Of course we know more about these two, because they actually have books associated with them . With Ch u n Yu Yi, we don’t have any books . We just have his stories. But indeed, he's very important, or else he would not be recorded by the grand historian, Si Ma Qian , in the historical records. What these three are basically giving us now i s a theoreti cal system about how disease, eti ology, and the pathological process that takes place, which is still anatomical, is in line wi th Classical thinking. So these are the three forerunners developing systems of medi cal concepts of how to deal wi th pathology, and of course each approach is a little different. Hua Tuo focu sed more on acupuncture. He also does herbs, but a lot of times his herbs were more or l ess to numb an area so he could really use those Nine Needles and get into those areas. Zhang Zhong ]i11g is more interested in the herbal approach. Chu n Yu Yi, whenever you would hear him tal k, I mean, stori es about hi m, i t is always with Moxibusti on . Histori cally, acupuncture, herbs a n d Moxibustion relate t o these three well known clinicians. It’ s an orientation that begins to take pl ace wi th some of these early clini ci ans . So he is one of the first, and Chu n Yu Yi develops a theory about Yang Q i . From hi s stori es, commentators have suggested that he probably was ori entated about Yang Qi in the hea d . So he probabl y did a l ot of treatments invol ving the scalp . B.
Qin Yue Ren, B ian Que (407 - 310 B . C . E . )
&
the Nan Jing
The next perso口， which actually has an even earlier d ate than Chun Yu Yi, but is seen primarily in discussions from the grand histori an, Si Ma Qia n , and that is Bian Que 扁 鹊 . We actually have a stone relief from the Han Dynasty depicting Bian Que, where hi s face is human and hi s body i s that of a bird . And the word Q u e has the character for bird in it. So he is usually seen, or some peopl e probably think of him, as a Sh aman, wearing a bird outfit. He was also listed as a Wu, a Shaman . And of course, some people would say he is more of a Slzi. His biggest associ ation is with the Nan Jing . At least we give him credi t for the Nan Jing . He i s the first person that we have a record of who performed acupuncture, again in the hi storical records. Consequentl y, he is often refered to, among the Chinese, as the First A cupuncturi st. He is the first in that we have record that he d i d a cupuncture . We even have a record that he did heart transpl ants, cutting open a person’s chest, taking out their heart, cl eaning the heart and then p utting the heart back in. Agai口， how true is it? We don’t know, but most people obviou sly think that it is not, because they don’t think medical technology was that good back then, but we don’t know . We also know that from the story about Bian Que that he treated Han Fei Zi. Remember Han Fei Zi was the Legalist. He was the one who believes that all
people are born evil, and the only way to keep people in order i s to strive for power. That’ s the Legal ists. He’ s one of the prim ary Legalists . And Han Fei Zi,
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in his writing, mentions an encounter between King Huan of the state of Cai, with Qin Yue Ren . And in this particular story, basically it is a story where he sees this king and he tells the king that his i llness is on the surface right now, and he needs to get treated . If he does口’t get treated, he i s going to have more serious problems. The king feel s fine, so he d oes not listen to him . Then 1 0 days later, Binn Que comes back, sees the king, and says， ”Now your condition is in the level of the Sinews and you better get it treated, or else it is going to get \Vorse.” And again, the king, not feeling any symptoms, disregards hi s a dvice and then 1 0 d ays l ater, h e comes back and says, "Your Highness, you really need to get treated . Your condi ti on now is at the l evel of the Intestines, at the level of the Bowel s . l f you don’t get that treated, it definitely will become m ore seriou s . " And again, the king disregards that. Then 1 0 days later, B ian Que comes. He sees the king and takes hi s leave. So the king wonders what happened . Why isn’t he tal kin g to me? And consequ ently he asks someone to go and look for him . And when the Imperi al eunuch goes to look for him, he says， “＼!\Tell, when I first saw him, the di sease was in the level of the surface. lf he had applied a hot compress, the disease would have gone a\A/ay. 1 0 days later when I saw him, the disease was in the sinews. lf he had used acupuncture, at thi s point the disease would have gone away . And then later on I saw that the condi tion had now moved into the Bowel s . lf he had taken herbal decoctions, the di sease would have gone away. The l ast time I saw him, it was in the level of the bones . There is nothing I can do for him . The di sease will be very diffi cult to 廿eat. ” Then he takes hi s leave, and he actu ally then l eaves the ki口gdom . It is said that five days later, the king becomes severely ill, and desperately looks for B ian Que. At that point, he has already left, and subsequ ently a few days later, they say the king dies. That is recounted by Han Fe i Zi. That's again a story. The im porta n t p a rt of th a t story, that medical pra cti ti oners have extrapol ated from, tells you about modali ties. If something is in the surface, the best applicati on is the use of compresses. Then, as i t gets more severe, u se acupuncture. Then even more severe, use herbal medicine. Again, this is a time when a cupuncture and herbal medicine is developing independentl y . The herbalist is going to draw upon thi s and say, "You see . We treat m uch more serious conditi ons than acupuncturi sts . That story tells u s that already. So even the first Acupuncturist sai d that if it is in the level of the Bowels, that they have to use herbs. That' s a bias that someti mes is used, based on thi s one story, other stories too, but thi s is one. And of course, Bian Que was eventually assassinated. He went to another state . There was another physician there who fel t very jeal ous of him, by the name of Li Shi, and Li Slzi essenti ally had him assassinated out of j ealously . So when we l ook at B ia n Que, again, he i s one of the Gods of Chinese Medicine. C/11111 Yu Yi, the first person we talked about, is not. B ian Que is one of the Gods of Chinese Medicine, m ai nl y because Emperor Ren Zang in the Song Dynasty . Most of the emperors in the So11g Dynasty have the word Zang . Zo11g means ancestor. So they are m aking a big hom age to and showing respect to their ancestors . All the Song Dynasty emperors, all of them use the word Zo11g, as i s Zang Qi, Ancestral Qi. Ren Zang was an emperor in the Sa11g Dynasty, about 118
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1 034 A .C E . R e n Zang was si ck and he got treated by one of the Imperi al physi ci ans named Xu Xi, X-U X-1, I guess . And Xu Xi basically caused the emperor to have a miraculou s healing, and the emperor asked him what i t is that he did that helped hi m heal so quickl y . And Xu Xi said， ”I applied the method of Bian Que.” So he \Vas refering back to this earlier story . So in honor of Bian Que, the Song emperor erects a temple to B ia n Que and canonized B ia n Que as one of the Gods of Chinese Med i cine in the capital at that time, Nan Jing. So at that point, B inn Que is now immortali zed and he now becomes one of the Gods of Chinese Medi cine . In fact, I’ve been tol d that that temple is still in existence in Nan Jing today . So if you go to Nan Jing, you go got the templ e . They actually have a big plaque wi th the decree, the Imperial decree of thi s dedi cation to Bian Que. So Bian Que i s one of the Gods of Chinese Medi cine. There are a lot of stori es abou t B ian Qu e . The hi stori cal records also talk abou t B ian Que treating one of the princes from another state, the sta te of G uo, I guess G-U-0 would be the Pin Yin for that, where the prince was comatose. They say that Bian Que used San Yang, Three Yang Wu Hu i, Five Meeting . And that has been one of the fascinating commentaries of Chinese history. In other words, everyone wanted to know, "What exactly did he use to bring thi s prince ou t of thi s comatose state？ ” If the prince was com atose, he used San Yang Wu Hui, Five Meeting . Three Ya ng, Five Meeting . San Yang Wu Hui, Hu i as in Bai Hui. So a gain, commentari es h ave speculated basically based on names of Poi nts. Remember, we have San Yang Luo, SJ-8 or Triple Energizer 8. That' s the name of that Point, Three Yang . And we know Di Wu Hui. Di Wu Hui i s GB-42 . And i f y o u l ook under the functi ons o f SJ-8, i t i s a Point that i s u sed t o Open the Portals. So i t i s a Point, arguably that \voul d probably bring som eone back to a state of consci ousness . But GB-42 i s not. It doesn't Open the Portals, even though it i s used for eye problems a n d hearing problem s . So m aybe they were using i t to open up the eyes and the ears, but i t doesn’t speci fical l y in the old days. We don’t think of i t as a Point th at, at l east in modern days, when we look at the functions of acupuncture textbooks, since functions were indi cated, they didn’t give thi s Point as a Point that d eals wi th Openin g up the Portal s . So other commentators have suggested, ＇ ’ Well, no, the Three Yang probably represented the Three Ya ng Meridi ans, the Three Yang Channel s . And they were probably using these Three Yσ ng Channel s Points and th en Needling the Three Ya ng Channel s . ” Obvi ously m ost comm entators are going to say it is the Jing Well Points of the Three, or the Six Ya ng Meri di ans, the Three Yang: Tai Yang, Slzao Yang, Yang Ming is what I m ean, and that he probably used that. Again, highly unlikely, if I was commentating on that, because i t i s not that common in the ol d days to use so many Meri dians, at the time of B ian Quι And given the size of the Needles, I don’ t think they wou l d be Bleeding all of the Jing Well Points . So probably not necessari ly that. Wu Hui, some people have gone with Wu Hui and come up with Poi nts th at have the w ord Hu i in it, like Nao Hui, which I don’t remember which number that would be, but Nao Hui would be a Hu i Point, or Bai Hu i, Du-20. So they come up wi th all the Points where you have Hui in it, Hui Yang. Hui Yang would be BL-35 . And they believe m aybe that was how he was u sing it. But that has become kind of like one of the puzzles. If you want a medi cal puzzl e, figure out what B ia n Que did based on the Shi Ji, the Histori cal
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Records when they say Three Yang, Wu Hu i to bring someone out of a comatose state . That’ s been one of these hi storical medical puzzles, where some people want to entertain themselves, they go and figure out what he di d . So that is something that you might want to do ,too. The next topic that we have i s the Na n Jing . The Nan Jing i s the first textbook that essentially gets rid of the notion that Bian Que should be considered like a superstiti on . So even though he is depicted as a Shaman, he reall y, if we were to assume 出at the Nan /ing was wri tten by him, and that is what people are saying, the Nan Jing makes a very important assertion that medi cine needs to be independent of magical practi ces . You don’ t want to be associated wi th, you don’t want to have incantations, even though the Su Wen mentions treatments by incantation. They don’t tell you what the incantations are, but they mention that incantation is a way of treating . In the Nan /ing, none of those things are there. So people begin to see that there i s an independence between medi cal pra cti ces and Shamani c or superstitious practi ces . So thi s is where som e people believe that, the fact that the Na n / i ng com es from that arena, most likely i t was not written by Bian Que. It is probabl y attributed to him as an honor. The Nan Jing is a medi cal debate about the concepts that are written about in the Su Wen and the Ling Sh u . ＼气／hat they are debating is prim arily the Ling Slzu . They are debating about the concepts that are in there. ＼气／hat they are really doing i s they are saying， “Well, I don’t understand this. What do you think thi s means？” And then someone else would say, "I think this is what it means.” And that becomes your comm entary on these diffi cult i ssues . So it is almost like Bian Que presents the first set of difficult issues. He, or whoever wrote it, comments on it and says， “Thi s is the meaning.” And then later generations will comment on th ose earlier commentaries. The second m ost commentated upon book in Chinese medical history, outside of the Shang Han Lim is the Nan /ing. That’ s the second most heavily wri tten abou t. And if you include Japanese comm entary, then it probabl y woul d be the most commentated book in the history of Oriental Medicine. But it is highl y commentated upon and everyone disagrees with each other. Some people go wi th character analysis. ＂飞Nell, they use this word . This word could only mean thi s . " Others woul d say， ”They used the wrong word . It really meant this other word .” So that is one way of approaching it. The others woul d approach it based on the times. If you are looking at the
Song Dynasty, thi s is goi ng to be a very di fferent era . People are going to have
the Neo-Confuci anist influence. They are going to judge it in a very different m anner. So when you look at the Nan Jing, one of the people who other people a l ot of times give more of the histori cal credit for the Nan J i ng to is Yang Xuan Zao. He is said to have probably been the real author of the Nan Jing. We definitely know that he i s the one that gave it 81 Chapters. Bian Que is not associated with 81 Chapters . Again, most likely the earliest texts are not 81 Chapters, just as Wang B ing m akes the Su Wen into 81 Chapters. Yang Xuan Zao i s the one that is responsible for organizing the Na n Jing into 81 Chapters.
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And in Ya ng Xuan Zao's organization, he basical l y emphasi zed the cl assification of di seases into Empty or Full, Hot or Cold, Inner or Outer, what today we would consi der Internal / External, but not necessarily using the same Chinese character for that. Yang Xuan Zao i s the one who brings into the Na n Jing the passages 出at we believe probably did not come from Bian Que, but came from hi m . Thi s i s the i dea of Needling the J i ng W e l l Poi nts in the winter, Needling the Ying Spring Points in the spring. In other words, you are dealing wi th Transmission . That’ s a Transmission theory : the idea that if we are l ooking at the beginning of energy, the beginning of energy would be the spring . That would be the Well Point. A s the energy reaches i ts peak, we would say that’ s summer. That would be the so-called Spring Point. Then you woul d have the Stream, the River and the Sea . This is the Waterway system . So the idea that we are Needling the Jing Well Point in the winter i s that we are trying to treat the di sease as it begins to get transmitted into the spring . Basically that’ s the recipe . It i s very simple. In the spring, you use the Ying Spring Point. In the summer, you use 出e Slzu Stream Point. It basically follows that parti cular recipe. So that’ s a Transmission i dea, where you are really looking at the conditi on, not eye to eye, but where i t i s going to be transmitted to. So he is the one that is associ ated wi th devel oping that idea in the Nan J ing . So when you read the Nan Jing today, the assumption is that was the way Bia n Que wrote it. That’ s not true. A l ot of changes have occurred in that textbook over the centuries. It’ s ju st 出at when we study i t, when you look at what people are trying to do to the text, that i s often a refl ecti on of some of the pol itical and soci al aspects that were going on . He i s associated wi th that aspect of 出e Nan Jing . Are there any questi ons about B ia n Que or Xun Yu Yi? Everyone i s comfortable? Again, I don’t want to get into the Nan Jing, but the Na n Jing i s by itsel f one of the most important textbooks of Chi nese Medicine . Bian Que is, as I menti oned, one of the God s of Chinese Medicine. C.
Zhang Ji, Zhang Zhong Ji ng ( 1 42 - 21 9 A .CE.) & Slzang Han /ia B ing Lun
The next person we have i s Zhang Zhong Jing . A gain, as I said, Zhang Zlzong Jing ' s textbook is the most commentated textbook in Chinese Medicine
and in the Chinese culture. Some of these d a tes are not necessaril y accurate, because a l ot of times, dating is a littl e bit diffi cult. I have seen where Zhang Zhong Jing h a s been given the birth date o f 1 52 instead o f 1 42. S o there’ s going to be some discrepancies sometimes in the dating. If you look at Zhang Zhong Jing, he is noted for writing the book Slzang Han Jia Bing Lzm, Injury due to Cold and Mi scell aneou s D i sease Treati s e . A g ain, L u n sug gests that it i s an oral l y transmi tted work, not som ething that h e wrote. He probably has not developed it onl y by himsel f, but it mi ght have b een orall y transmitted to him . And of course, he i s sometimes given as the comparison to Hippocrates, or in some cases to Gaelen of the Greeks, because he is living closer to the time of Gaelen than to Hippocrates. But he is defini tely associ ated very similarly to Hippocrates in this i dea that both of them were interested i n creating Heat as the basis of healing,
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Yang Qi. Hippocrates has the famous statement, "Give me a fever and I'll give you a cure.” Zlzang Zhong Jing is also interested in arou sing Yang Qi. Zhang Zhong Jing is sai d to have read the Su Wen as well as the Ling Sim . And remember the Su We n basically focused on Wind and Col d . In Chapter 3 of the S u Wen, Wind i s the cause of 1 00’ s of diseases. Col d i s also a maj or pathological factor to contend with. They don’ t mention so much Dampness . In fact, i f you read the Su Wen, you will find that Wind or Col d that is not resolved, devel ops into Febrile Di seases . Wind or Cold that is not resolved develops into Water disea ses . So Dampness and Heat are real l y the evol u ti on of the transformati on that comes from Wind and Col d . Yes, we can probabl y research it more and say， ”I see see the Six Climati c Factors. ” But did they emphasize all si x? N o, it i s Wind and Col d . Likewi se, we also menti oned that in Chapter 3 of the Su Wen, it says to treat Cold, one has to u se the Fi ve Flavors, which gives birth to th e i dea that perhaps the onl y way to treat Col d is to comes up with a dietary regime or, in his case, remember he focused on diet, herbal medicine. So my contention is that Zlzang Zlzong J i ng did not develop Shang Han Lzm because he was just interested in developing a system, but rather he was motivated by what he read in the Su W凹z . The Su Wen also describes the stages, it’s just that in the Su Wen they describe by days. The first day, the conditi on is in Tai Yang. The second day, the condition is in Yang Ming. The third day, the conditi on is in Slzao Yang. So Zlzang Zlzong Jing u sed that i mage, and he is the one who says， “Well, it’s not reall y the number of days. I t’ s th at the day is a metaphor for the progression . ” And he u ses the same nom encl ature that i s used in the Su Wen in coming up with the stages of di seases. So Tai Yang, whi ch basically preoccupies the bulk of the Shang Han Lz川， those of you who have read the Shang Han Lun, the Tai Yang i s really the bulk of the textbook. Most of the chapters are all abou t Tai Yang and the complications associated with Tai Ym咳， because if you can’ t get ri d of it in the in i ti al stage, that’s when it gives the evoluti on of the other stages. So to him, the i mportance is getting rid of it in the Tai Yang stage. Thi s is going to be very i mportant premi se for some of the schools that are going to devel op during the Jin Yuan Peri od that we will stu d y the second time that we meet, for those of you who are taking the enti re series, because there are going to be peopl e who beli eve that the focu s on Tai Yang i s cruci al to the well being of the entire body, which gives birth to the School of Attacking and Purging . Now, as I was saying, his theory i s based on the premise that when you l ook at the dynamics of an Exogenous Pathogeni c Factor, he can now create a theory that di seases do follow a progression and the progression is from what we woul d call the Affli ction of Wind, Zhong Feng or Slzang Han and that, in truth, his theory, in som e ways, is very simple. I don’ t want to make it seem l ike I am down playing him. He would not be very happy with me if I did that. The idea here is that you have Wind, you have Col d and essentially what we are first defining ,,vithin TCM l anguage . . . maybe I should preface that with TCM m akes i t very simple. That’ s why they put it at j u st the appendix of the textbooks, at the back of the text. Wind Cold would be seen as a Tai Yang stage and then subsequentl y as the Cold, or the 飞叩ind, begins to block Yang Qi or in 1 22
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acupuncture l anguage, Wei Qi, that blockage of this Yang Qi begins to transform or begins to create Heat. Then there’ s the Heat, as seen in the Yang M ing stage that we associate with it. And likewi se, at the s臼ne time that the Heat is being created, the Col d blocks the Wei Qi, or the Yang Qi, and it bl ocks it in the area that we talked about where it is the center of the human body. As we become two-l egged, thi s i s the cen ter of the chest, whi ch means that with that Obstructi on, there are also signs and symptom s of Qi Stagna tion, Slzao Yang. So some people would say， “VVell, the Heat came from the Qi Stagnation. I think Zlzang Zlzong Jing was \Vrong . Let’ s put the Slzao Yang stage before Yang Ming.” And that i s one of the big debates wi thin the whole tradtion of Slzang Han Lu n . They debate about that among them selves, that it shouldn’t be Yang Ming second, but it shoul d be Slzao Ya ng. So Tai Yang, Slzao Ya ng, Ya ng Ming.
Defini tely in terms of acupuncture theory, we tend to follow that belief more than Tai Yang, Yang Ming, Slzao Yang, as we saw with the division of acupuncture Meridi ans. So what we have not is not only Qi Stagnati on and Heat, we know the Qi Stagnati on and Heat consumes the body’ s resources. In the l anguage of the Shang Han Lun, Ying Qi now goes to support Wei Qi, and as Ying Qi goes to support Wei Qi, there is an increase in Wei Qi and there is a decline in Ying Qi, which means that there i s an increase in fever. There is an increase in sweating. That i s the Four Great signs of Yang Ming, and we have a lot of Dryness, because we have Fl uid decline. And, i f it is sti l l n ot resol ved, that Qi Stagnati on, that Heat that i s being produced consumes the Y巾， in particular Stom ach Yin woul d be how \Ve describe that, and now what we have are signs and symptoms of Q i Defi ciency . And a s that Yin i s being consumed from the surface, i t is now going to be consuming the Yin that i s at the d eep level, and consequently we move to the so-called Tai Yin and Slzao Yin stage. As we know, whenever you have Empty Heat, or thi s Yin that is being consu med, th e Heat can sometimes escape, or Empty Heat ri ses, or what we would call Floating Yang which becomes known as the Jue Yin stage. That’ s what I mean by the simpl i ci ty . We can look at it, or at least a lot of times students are taught to mem orize i t, by these parti cul ar patterns. It is Wind Cold, it is Internal Heat, it is Constrained Qi, it’s Qi Defi ci e口cy, it’ s Empty Heat wi th Empty Yang or Empty Yin or Empty Yang, and then Running Piglet Qi, to give i t the Ju e Yin stage. Now thi s i d eology th at we have that about thi s progression is very important because i f this i s tru e, that he i s basically seeing this within the context of the theory of herbal medi cine, by the time we get into Sun Si Miao, who says that comprehensive medi cine i s acupuncture plus herbal medi cine and all the Preventative measures. But he is saying integration. That means now, if I’m coming from a Slzang Han Lun perspective, and I’m seeing that things foll ow a progressi on, and even though I’m giving it a nomencl ature of Tai Ya ng, Shao Ya n g coming from the S u Wen, I can now also argue that the Meridi ans from the Lungs all the way to the Liver i s, as a continuum, reflective of the progressi on of di seases. In other words, what I am saying is that if the Meri di ans are indeed a continuous l oop, where it begins with the Lungs, and 1 23
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that’ s the basi c premise: it begins with the Lungs, this i s not onl y the beginning of the physiology of the Meridians, thi s is the beginning of the pathology of the Meridians as well . Whi ch means now, if I go back to the Ta n g Dynasty and I read acupun cture textbooks, where integration i s beginning to take place, the signs and symptoms that I’m going to see in thi s textbook are going to be different from the Jia Yi Jing . When we l ook at the Lung Meridi an now, and the Ta n g Dynasty writings, we are going to see that signs and symptoms of the Lung Meri di an includes fever and chills, aversion to col d, little sweat. What are we seeing? Symptom s of Tai Yang. These are Tai Yang stages in the Shang Han Lun . So now what they are doing is they are revamping acupuncture, or adding herbal medicine to acupuncture. And noti ce, if you read the Jia Yi Jing, these are not going to be the symptoms that they are going to be describing. They are going to have some Luo symptoms, hot hands, so they put some of th at in the Meri di an, because remember you only get Luo symptoms becau se it comes up from the Prim ary Channel s. So it has to have some Primary Meridians' signs and symptoms. Then when you start read the Large Intestine Meridian, what you start to see is they j u st talk abou t fever, dry lips, dry mouth. The i d e a of Wind Col d being transformed now into what we woul d call Wind Heat. And by the time you get to the Stom a ch, interestingly enou gh, you see profuse sweat, hi gh fever, irri tability. What are 出e symptoms of the Four Great si gns? You are starting to see that, maybe constipation, the Yang Ming of the Bowel si gns and symptoms. So these symptoms that we see in the Meridians of the Tang Dynasty ar� because of integration . So if you wonder where those symptom s are coming from, how come they are invented ? They d i dn’t invent; they just integrated. That’s all they di d in the Tang Dynasty . That i s going to have an impact. So even if you read Ellis and Wi seman, they are going to have these signs and symptoms under these Prim ary Channel s. And if you continu e on the li st, you will see eventu ally there are going to Spleen Qi Deficiency signs, Qi Deficiency signs, and you start seeing Empty Heat si gns. You start seeing si gn s and symptoms that basically now represent a progression. That's one of the things that we are going to see due to the influence of the herbal aspect of Zhang Zhong Jing. So it is very important wi thin the hi story of acupuncture, as well as the history of herbal medicine. We will find that by the time you get into the Ta ng Dynasty, there are going to be Slzang Han Lun practitioners who are going to be using acupuncture to treat these Stages, whi ch eventu ally is going to get l ost, because acupuncture by the end of the Tang Dynasty begins to actually dwindle down as a popu l ar modality \Vi thin the popul ation. And it conti nues even up to the present day . Acupuncture, yes, is popular, but if you go to China and you do a survey, if you ask a Chinese person， “If you are si ck, whom woul d you go to see？” not even asking about Western medicine, because that might be the first answer, they would say， ”I want to see an herbalist.” They have already been subjected to the notion that acupuncture, like the ini tial i mpression that we have in the west, i s mostl y for pain, that it doesn’ t really treat Internal conditions . But that is n o t a 1 24
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trend that happened because of Western medicine. Yes, Western medicine has an influence, because they see that Western medi cal doctors use needles to inj ect something into you to make you feel good . How can these acupuncturi sts put a Needle in, and they are not even inj ecting anything into you, and make you feel good. In fact, when I was growing up, my mother u sed to ask my grandfather, who was teaching me, They used to ask my grandfather how does acupuncture work. It was very hard sometimes to explain to them exactly what is the m echani sm . So this is common among the Chinese popul ati on . Today thei r belief system i s going to b e i nfluenced b y Western medi cine, b u t early o n in Chinese hi story, it begins to dwindle down . That is why you will see that the textbooks that come out in the Ming D ynasty are going to have really fancy names to a ttract peopl e to come back to acupuncture: The Great Accomplishments of A cupuncture, the Great A chi evem ents of Acupuncture, Acupuncture in i ts Grandest Form . They use maj or titles that we see in the Ming Dynasty . Now the question is, is it a good seller? Not necessarily. That’s going to be the probl em . Now wi th Zhang Zhong Jing, we know that even though hi s wri tings have been orally transmitted, the earli est copy that we have of his wri ting i s actually dated back to the Song Dynasty . So we don’ t reall y have anything prior to the Song . And, the copy is actually not even in China. It is in a library in J apan. It dates back to the Song Dynasty, written by Cheng Wu 儿 or commentated I should say, by Clze11g Wu Ji. Remember, i t is a commentary that you are seeing . Even thou gh I don’ t have Cheng Wu Ji here, we'll stu dy him our next time together. Cheng v\!u Ji is the founder of the School of H armoni zati on . He is the one who b asically says that to treat disease, the best way of treating di sease is learning copihg strategi es, Harmonizing . Don ’ t rock the boat; j u st l earn to live with certain things and H armoni ze it. He' s the one who says Bupluerum, Shao Yang is Harmonization. When you (experi ence) Slzao Yang, i t i s like, you don’t know what to do. You are wishy-washy, half i n, hal f ou t. I can’t make any deci si ons, Gall Bladder, Triple Energizer. And from the Sha n g Han Lun traditi on, what i s the major herb they u se for Shao Yang? Buplu erum, Cha i H u , which means it came from the ”barbari ans”， by the way. But that doesn' t mean anything. So Cheng Wu Ji i s the one who basically m akes herbal formulas like Xiao Yao Wan become the formula of the day. That’ s the formula everyone w ants to use, Free and Easy. Everyone is Free and Easy, X iao Yao Wa 刀 ， Soothe the Liver. Essenti ally, he believes that the coping mechanism, Harmonization, is the best strategy in dealing with di sease. For some people， 由at might be true. For others, that might not be true. So he is going to be attacked by some, and agreed wi th by others. He is one of the great 白 g ures of the next peri od, this peri od relating to the Jin Yuan, the Song Dynasty.
Zha ng Zhong J ing’ s infl u ence spreads all the way to Korea and Japan . Those o f y o u w h o are famili ar with the J apanese herbal medi cine, Kampo i s essentially Shang Han Lwz_medi cine. That’ s coming from Zhang Zhong Jing when you see Japanese herbal practi tioners. They basically use the formulas coming from the Slzang Han Lun tradition . That’ s why even Koreans, vvhen you see the shingles on their d oors, if they are herb ali sts, you usually see what they would 1 25
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call Han Yi: Ha n as in Han Dynasty, Yi as in physician, or Han Medicine . Ha n Medi cine, herbally, i s Zhang Zlzong Jing medicine. So a lot of Korean practitioners also use the tradition of Zhang Zhong Jing. So it is very influential in the hi story of Chinese Medi cine. He is also one of the Gods of Chinese Medicine. D.
Hua Tua ( 1 90 - 265, A.CE.)
The next individual we have is Hua Tua. Again, Hua Tua i s one of those people for whom we have a lot of diffi culty with the d ates . During lunch Steve asked me, how long it took for me to organize these h andouts . I said， “The only thing that took ti me was real l y figuring out the dates I should give for these peopl e," because the various sources have so many different dates. What I di d was I tri ed to look for ones that seem to all agree \Vi th the same dates and I used that date. But the dates for Hua Tua vary from 1 1 0 to 207 A . C E ., or 1 4 1 -208 A . C E ., so there are m any dates for him, and it makes it very difficult to fi gure out. Again, we talked abou t why i t was hard to figure out the dates a lot of times, because each of the VVarring States have their own calendars, thei r own d ating . So you need to be abl e to say, "Hua Tua was i n this state on thi s particul ar date.” Their dating systems were very different, so you don’t know if i t came before or after another time in another state. In any case, Hua Tua, definitely i s a person that we see mentioned prim arily in the history of the Three Kingdom s . It’s in the San Cua Slzi, the History of the Three Kingdoms, where they describe him wi thdrawing an arrow from Guan Di 阔 帝 , one of these patron Gods for Protection that we mentioned, that you often see in a lot of pi ctures . Thi s person says， ”Oh I don’t need your anesthesi a . I can still read my book and you pull that out and do your surgery .” That’ s a famous depi ction of
G uan Di. In the Records of the Three Kingdoms, it says that he had three disciples and these three disciples are sai d to practice these Daa Yin exercises that have been p opul arized as the Five A nimal Frol i c s . The i d ea of having the Five Anim als, the Deer, the Tiger, the Bear, the Ape and the Crane, or sometimes people would just call it the Bird, those Five Ani m al Froli cs, I just want you to understan d the nature of the Five Animal Frolics. Yes, in the old days, people were naturali sts . They looked at anim al s, and they tried to imi tate animals' behavi or. They woul d look at the kinds of terrains that the animals were living in, and how they adapted to those terrains. They believed if 出at animal was abl e to adapt to a D a m p environm ent, b y l earning to i m i tate those ani m als' movements, it would help someone who is Damp . Or with an animal that is able to withstand high temperatures or withstand cold, by imi tating those animal s, it would help us to withstand Col d or withstand Heat. That is one approach. That is the i dea of observation. As you may also know, another common thing that we see in the old days, was the i dea of going into a stance, or into meditation, and j ust allowing the person to go into a spontaneous motion . Some of that was popularized back in the l a te 70’ s i nto the 80’ s with the Soaring Crane exerci ses, where peopl e basi cally went into these Stances and they were allowed or given permi ssion (to 126
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go into spontaneous motion), until the government deci ded that’ s not okay, and they banned the practi ce of Soaring Crane, because peopl e were giveη the p erm ission to j u s t do w h a tever they wanted， ”Whatever you feel, be spontaneous， ” and you have people j umping, you had people kind of moving around all over the place . That was most likely practiced in the ancient times as well, because endem i c to d oing Dao Yin exerci ses, is allowing yourself to meditate on the movement, after it has been fini shed. So as you medi tate, you are also encouraged to liberate, to let go. And as you let go, you start imitating, or you start doing certain m ovements that to an outsi der’ s eye, mimics or imitates an animal . Remember, what m akes you become ill is that energy， 由at in the Chinese belief, makes you more beastl y . Remember, we are trying to come away from the Earth to move towards Heaven. So what makes us become m ore sick are things that draw us back down to Ear出 ． So when they observe that this person who had a Heart condition, begins to dupli cate thi s parti cular anim al, and they notice that another person who has a similar clinical presentation, who produ ced that type of condition, what do you d o ? You start saying， “Well, this type of movement that I see with these spontaneous m ovem ents must b e very useful for th ose who have heart condi tions， ” the development of ani m al exercises . What I am suggesting is that the animal exercises are not just observation, but also very experiential as wel l . It i s almost like when someone is kind of like just going like thi s (arm s d angling down, rocking left and ri ght), to them, that l ooks like an Ape, becau se that is what apes do. They move from the shoulders . To them, and if you notice a person who i s moving like thi s, what you are constantly doing i s you are stimulating your Ki dney s . Thi s side-to-si de movem ent is obviousl y going to have an effect on Gall Bl a d d er, but it is reall y a m aj or Stimul ati on, if you are si tti ng, on the Ki dneys. So th at became a Kidney exerci se. Thi s is how they invent Qi Gong exercises. It is not just， ”Oh just do thi s movement” and 出at is Qi Gong. There is intellectual thinking behind it as ,.vell, as well as experiential . Hua Tuo is noted for developing, or at least as the first person that has thi s idea of, the animal exercises, whi ch then l a ter generati ons of Qi Gong experts are going to dupli cate and come up with the Qi Gong exercises .
Hua Tuo is more or less seen as a Fang Shi. He is in the biographies of Fang Slz is, a book tha t has been transl ated into English about Fang Shis. He is one of the people listed in tha t period of the Han Dynasty . Even thou gh some people wou l d say he was probabl y more of an Yi. Now Hua Tuo is noted for his surgical
procedures . And he i s also noted for developing the theory that diseases start from Belovv, rather than from Above. You contract diseases from Below . He u ses the term Qi Leg, not to be confu sed with Leg Q i . Leg Qi u sually m eans edema. So the term Qi Leg, refers to Qi traveling up the legs. And Sun Si Miao is going to give him the credit for understanding these sensitive Points along the spine, whi ch later on, we call Hua Tuo Jia Ji Points . He invents, or he is noted for u sing the term All-Sh i along the spine . And Hua Tuo, in hi s writings, often recommends that you use very few herbs and very few Points . And he m akes extensive u se of Fu Zi, Aconite. In other words, when you talk about people putting Aconite on the navel and doing Moxa on top of that, Hua Tuo is usually 1 27
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the one that has a l ot of stori es rel ating to that type of treabnent, u sing Aconite,
Fu Zi, topi cally over Points . So again, not only in Needling Points, and not only
doing Moxa on Points, but applying herbs on Points as wel l . That’ s why a lot of tim es, m ed i ci nal liniments or medi cinal plasters, when you apply them on a Point, are usually given in respect to Hua Tuo, referred to as Hua Tuo Gao. Those are the ones we often see.
Hua Tuo, like in the discu ssion of B ian Q u e, was also assassinated . He treated Cao Cao 曹 操 for migraine. As he was Needling Cao Cao, Cao Cao
thought 出at maybe he is an assassin, and as a result he had Hua Tuo arrested and execu ted . So Hua Tuo was al so killed by what is referred to as a tyrant in Chinese Medical hi story . Cao Cao, was one of the kings.
Question: From what I ’ ve seen, m ost commentators say there are no extant wri tings of Hua Tuo . The story goes that when he was in j ail, he gave them to the ward en and they were burned. Blu e Poppy publishes a book . . . Answer: Zhong Zang Jing. Question: Yes, I wonder if you coul d just speak to your opinions on it. Answer: Wel l the Zhong Zang Jing i s the parti cular textbook that people talk about that is sai d to have been wri tten by the warden, or the person who was watching over Hua Tuo while he was in prison, and that thi s was something that was orally transmi tted to thi s ward en and as a result, they gave Hua Tuo the credit of Zhong Cang Jing. But there is no textbook that people really believe was wri tten by Hua Tuo . And even wi th the Zlzong Zang Jing, some peopl e dispute that i s a work of Hua Tuo. But it has the signatures of Hua Tuo becau se in there, it does d escribe thi s idea of Qi Leg, these pathologi es moving up in the legs . It does describe thi s i dea of sensi tivi ty al ong the spine . So as a result, i t has the tra dem arks that we thi nk of as coming from Hua Tuo. That’ s why people attribute that as most likely coming from Hua Tuo . But, yes, there are people who would di spute that.
E.
Ge Hong (281 - 341 A.CE.)
. Ge Ho11g was the al chemist, the The next person i s Ge Hong 葛 洪 famou s al chemi st. He lived in what we wou l d think of as the latter part of the Han Dynasty, the Eastern Han Dyansty . He lived from 281 to 341 A .CE. He was from Jiang Su Province and in the latter part of his life, he went to Guang Zhou. It is said that he retired in Lu Fu Shan 、覆 浮 山 in Gua ng Zhou, thi s mountain w here he continued to practice alchem y . Ge Hong is definitely one of the patriarchs of the alchemi cal tradition. He is deified. He is one of the Gods. He i s not s o much thought o f as a G o d o f medicine; h e i s j u st one o f the Gods of Chinese culture. Hua Tuo is also one of the Gods of Chinese Medicine. Ge Hong is also known by Bao Bu Zi. This is said to be his name, but this is also a text. The Bao Bu Zi is a text that talks about alchemy and i s associ ated with 1 28
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Ge Hong . There are segments of this text that have been translated into English. It’s more of an academi c type of work and schol arship, where they take segments of a text and transl ate it. Ge Hong ’s book has also been translated. Hi s writing have been 廿ansl ated into Engli sh as well, more for the lay public. That’ s what I meant when I sai d that. Ge Hong i s in the alchemical tradition . The alchemical tradition i nvolves thi s notion of both External, and in hi s case, even Internal al chemy . It is both, even though we often think that alchemy started out as an Internal cul tivation, and then moved into an External i deology, where there was the notion of taking something very d ense and m a king it become very light. That comes from the Internal concept, because the Internal concept is that if you l ook at the dense materi al that you have in your body, that’ s Jing. And that J in g i s eventually 廿ansformed into Slzen . Now this happens naturall y . J ing becoming Slzen happens naturally, because over the process of aging, the Jing breaks down, and what is happening, what is repl acing that Jing is your experiences of life. So as you l ose m ore and more i nnocence, and you become more of a person, per se, there is a certain belief that the Jing is goi ng into the Slzen, and that Shen is the transform ati on of Jin g into the Brain, into the Seat of Jing, the Marrow that we associ ate with the Brain. So that is a natural process . What we are looking at, considering, is can we alchemi call y control this process, becau se part of the idea in anci ent times was l ongevi ty . If I can control the amount of Jing that is di sseminating, that i s breaking down, that is aging, I can then retard aging and go into a state of l ongevi ty . That is why al chemy i s often associ ated with Daois t traditions, becau se we mentioned Yang Zlz u a n d his noti on that the physi cal body i s the most preci ou s thing, and even Lao Zi has a point of saying that the physical body will not peri sh, will not die. So the whole noti on of l ongevi ty i s bui l t i nto a lot of the Daois t th i n ki n g . So part of the alchemi cal tradition i s, how can I retard, how can I control the Jing, but at the same ti me we know that what is in the Jing is the Spirit. So that is to say that p art of the J ing i s that i t has the Curri culum that you need to experience in thi s life. Those are the Heavens that we mentioned, the 33 Heavens, but at the same time, the Jing itself represents aging . So the process w筒， can I get to reali ze what m y lesson is, and at the same time graduate from that lesson, and be able to willfully decide when I am going to die. That i s kind of like the premise . Can I figure out what the Shen is? Can I redeem the Spirit from ma tter, that’ s alchemy, so that I know what m y Curri culum i s, com e to the realizati on o f what m y Cu rri cu l um i s and d o i t, withou t having to gradu tate to the point that I die, rather keeping m y death at the point when I willfully deci de to abdicate m y Jing or not. Okay, I’m going to die now, so I willfull y shut down my breath and die. So that could be a process. Again, we know that some people can literall y control their own death . They can tell you, "Oh, I deci ded tomorrow is going to be my day. I’m going to move on. Let’ s gather everyone around, and I'll say goodbye to you . My lesson, m y Curri culum, i s completed i n this lifetime and m y physical body i s completed in thi s lifetime. I need to m ove on . I w ant to move on. I’m going to say goodbye to everyone . ” And th en we m ove on . So that would be an example of thi s 1 29
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redemption process. So part of alchemy was to be able to do that. And Ge Hong was experimenting with that. This notion that we see philosophically, through our own bodily humors, now is taken on a physical level， 出at we take something that is very dense, lead, that i s very dense, and we try to get out of thi s very dense substance, the Slzen . Again, we have thi s i dea of Darkness. What I don’t know about my life, and that' s what I’m trying to find, the Light in the D arkness, the Tunnel in the Darkness, so that it helps me to Illuminate and gives me Light: the i dea of Water and Fire . Thi s i s the noti on that we see, in the alchemical l anguage. They could repl ace that with a trigram . They could replace it wi th an image of an ani m al . They could repl ace i t wi th just words, but those are metaphors for saying 出e same thing. Depending on whi ch tradition you come from, you might choose to describe thi s as a D ark Tortoise, coming to do battl e, in some cases they would say that, or coming to coalesce with the Red Phoenix . They might use terms like that. They are u sing animal s as symbolic components. But the idea here i s that with External al chemy, that is what they were trying to do. They were trying to take the Red Substance, coal esce it with the D ark Substance and from there, wi th the firing and the firing, get the Spirit to be just Illuminating that if I take that substance, i t will bring me into this state of knowing what my Curri culum is. If you know \vhat your Curriculum i s in l ife, in a way, you are enli ghtened . You have now gotten the Light. So they use things that are red, Cinnabar, that Red Substance, mercury, as we might call it. If not, they would actu all y use liquid mercury， ”quick sil ver” . That’ s definitely in China. The ” quick silver”， i t’ s also mercury, but they woul d see that as lead, the Darkness aspect as compared to Cinnabar. In some al chemi cal traditi ons, they would see that what you need is an intermediary; between Fire and Water lies E arth, right in the center, that Earth is the Transformative aspect. Earth is what brings Yang Qi to enhance the Fire . I can’ t get the right firi ng time. My furnace doesn't really burn enough. I can’ t get thi s alchemi cal furnace. So what we do is add Earth to it. We add Yellow, and that is sulfur. Just like sul fur, Liu Huang, in herbal medicine, sulfur is used to enhance Yang Qi. It adds more warm th to everything. They woul d add sul fur into it. We see that in these places where we have sul fur coming out of the springs. It is much hotter. There is a lot m ore Yang energy in there. So sulfur now gets added into that mixture. And indeed it raises the Heat that i s in that elixir, and now comes alchem y . This is the primitive beginning of alchemy that Ge Hong was experimenting with. He was using things like realgar, Xiong Huang, thi s other alchemi cal substance. So what you h ave is External alchemy as well as Internal alchemy . That means that endemic to Ge Hong ’ s writing a n d h i s contribution to Chinese Medicine is that he is writing from the perspective of acupuncture as being something to ch ange one’s Spirit. Ge Hong i s from the tradition that takes silver, lead, Needles, silver is that Water Essence, and what he' s doing is adding Fire, yellow, gold, and ou t of that comes the redempti on of the Spirit, the Slzen. A lot of times, what they really di d with the gold and silver Needl e was they put it 1 30
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in a hot flame. You have what they call the Fire Needle. So not only am I doing acupuncture on you, but I am also doing Moxibusti on, cauterization. I’m also burning you as I Needl e you, because the notion of Ge Hong, and again, thi s is som e influence from Bud dhism, i s that the only way that you can, in many ways, transcend su ffering i s that you have to first acknowledge and be in suffering . Well, what better way to do i t than by burni ng you physi cally, in some way. So cauterization, the Hot Needl e, they call it the Hot Needle. They burn. So it’s no longer the J i n g Well Points that we saw with the Sinew Meri di ans, they are literall y now are using thi s al chemical traditi on where they are using Fire Needles on acupuncture Points, gol d and silver Needles. That comes a lot from the influence of Ge Hong, where again, the gold i s to bring more Yang Fire . So gold is seen as more Toni fying . The lead is that which you want to get ri d of. You don’t want that weightiness, that heaviness . Silver was for Dispersal . The other component abou t Ge Hong was that while he might be seen as someone who was very spi ri tu ally ori ented, he was also very pragmati c . He wrote the famou s Zho u Hou Bei Ji Fang, Emergency Formulas to Keep Up One’S Sleeve, basi cally a textbook abou t practi cal, inexpensive and effective remedi es, things that you have at home, that you could use. The famous formula that we u se, you probably stu dy it when you first study herbal medicine, Cong Bai Tang, that’ s from him . If you have Wind Cold, all you do i s, those black beans you u se for making something with black bean sauce, you’ re m aking fish or what have you, just take that. Chop up some scallions, mix the two, boil it up and you have a formula for \iVind Col d . You don’ t have time to go out and get Ma Huang 日 ng or Gui Zhi Tang, or what have you . Just do something that is in the kitchen . So that is an example of an effecti ve formula, something that you can do, in other words， ”ki tchen remedies" would be how we might call it today, if we were to wri te a book. And again, even thi s book, i t i s said to have been wri tten by Tao Hong Jing. So even though we give Ge Hong th e credit, like in response to that earli er questi on, this book is al so said not to have been by him . It is sai d to have been written by Tao Hong Jing, who wrote the Ben Cao, Shen Nong’ s Ben Cao. Tao Hong Jing i s said sometimes to be the actual writer of 出is.
Ge Hong defini tel y must have had some influence on Buddhi sm, because if you go to China, there is an area known as the Lo11g111e11 caves . These Buddhist caves in China, whi ch are basically sou th of Luo Yang, whi ch is the capital that we see when they begin to m ove back eastward, from the \!Vestern Han. When we m ove to Eastern Ha n , south of Luo Yang are these caves, when Buddhi sm came, they start to have these caves carved . And in one of the Bu ddhist caves are the prescripti ons from the textbook of Ge Hong, engraved on the walls in the caves. So definitely it must have been something that attracted Buddhists. It \Voul d m ake sense, because Buddhi sts, to alleviate suffering, you want things that are simple to do. So thi s i s part of Ge Hong’s legacy.
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F.
Huang Fu Mi (21 5 - 282 A .CE.)
&
the ]ia Yi Jing
If we continue with our history of important fi gures that are influential to the history of Chinese Medi cine, the next person we have is Huang Fu Mi. Huang Fu Mi i s noted for writing the Zhen Jiu Jia Yi Jing, what sometimes has been transl ated as the ABC's of a A cupuncture, namely because the sequence of chapters . The first chapter was the Jia Chapter, the second chapter i s the Yi Chapter, the third chapter i s the Bing Chapter, and so forth . That’ s the way the Chinese very often do, almost a set of characters for numbering different sections. And those were also the grading systems . If you had an A, you get the word ]ia, in the old days. If you had a B, you'd get the word Yi. So that is also a grading system that we had in the Chinese Imperi al Exam s . So Huang Fu Mi, defi ni tely hi s book has been translated into English by Blue Poppy Press . The systemization of acupuncture is what is reflected by his textbook. And in the textbook, what you have is an ou tlining the Meridi ans of acupuncture . So we know all the Meridi ans that were mentioned in the Ling Shu are also found in the ]ia Yi Jing: the Sinew Meri di ans, the Luo Meridi ans, the Primary Meri di ans, the Divergent Meri di ans, and the so-called Eight Extraordinary Vessel s. They were all found in the Jia Yi Jing . Also that issu e that we m entioned earli er, the Roots and Terminations, is also found in the Jia Yi Jing. And again, depending on the versions that you get, some of those versi ons include the Arm Channels and where the Arm Channels Terminate as wel l . I believe the one that is by Bl ue Poppy Press has that translation where they have the Arm Channels added into the Roots and Terminati ons Theory . ’fhe ]ia Yi Jing i s also, in rel ationship to a cupun cture, an im portant Poi nt book, where they describe the Points Anatomi cally. Which again, i s important because i f we are looking at di seases that are traveling Anatomical l y, being able to understand the Points and where they are located in rel ationships to the Anatomical area that the disease travel s to, becomes important in treatment s甘ategies. His book also describes some very basic functions that we associ ate with the Points of acupuncture. That’ s just in the acupuncture end . There are a lot of things about hi s book. His book includes theory that comes from the Shang Han Lun tradition. So he probably had l earned about the Slzang Han Linz, and keep in mind that at the time that Huang Fu Mi is living, the Sha ng Ha n Lu n tradition genera l l y was a rel atively guarded tradi tion. It i s not that everyone had exposure to it. In fact, Sun Si Miao talks about the Shang Han Lun tradi tion as a tradition that he i s aware of, but he does not know exactly what that traditi on practi ces, in his first book, Prescriptions 飞t\Torth 1 000 Pounds of Gold, the Qian Jin Yao Fang. But in his Supplement to the first book, at that point, Sun Si Miao i s aware o f what is taught i n the Slzang Han Lun, because he now talks about Shang Han Lun formul as. So that definitely shows that to a certain degree, avail ability of the Slzang Han Lun writings had been lacking. But obviously Huang Fu Mi has access to it, consi dering the way he talks about Shang Han condi tions. The way he describes it seems to suggest that he has read the Slzang Han Lu n textbook and he gives acupuncture strategies. So already, some of the acupuncture strategies 132
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for Shang Han Lun conditi ons are presented by Huang Fu Mi, just that i t i s not standardized. Huan g Fu Mi also talks about Body Typing, something that we see in the Ling Shu, but now further expanded upon by H u a ng Fu Mi . Body Typing is the
noti on that we mentioned earlier in yesterday’ s discussion, that you could l ook at a Tai Yang type, a Shao Yang type, Tai Yin type or a Shao Yin type. And he has another type that he added in, which is called a Bal anced Type. So there are Five Body Types that Huang Fu Mi addresses . Some Dao is ts wou l d dispute that, because to Daois m, there i s no such thing as balance . "He who i s bal anced is imbal anced ” would be th ei r noti on of that and ”He who i s imbal anced is probably that \vhich is very balanced . " So w e know that Huang Fu Mi i s the first person t o organize acupuncture i n a form that is easy to fol l ow . He al so addressed fundamental questions regarding Needling that we saw with Wu Wei. That is again, should these Points be N eedled obli quel y? Should these Points be needled perpendicul arl y ? He addresses that. ＼月ve don’t see that reall y being talked about in the Ling Sh u . So he basically rai ses these questions, but he also is suggesting how Points should be Needled. And there’ s also th e i dea of Point sel ecti on . Now what we have commonly found i n the Li ng Sim in terms of Point selecti on i s something of an open ended question . What I mean by that is that in the Li ng Slzu ， 由ey will tell you to treat, l et’ s say, Leg Tai Yang, but they won’t tell you what Point to treat. So that you real l y have to come up wi th the Points . When you read the ]ia Yi Jing, it is obvi ou s that he read the Ling Sim and he now i s telling you what Point he beli eved on e shoul d treat. And, some peopl e wou l d di spute hi s Point selection. But nevertheless, he i s being more specifi c. He is giving us recipes. On the other hand, thi s is where you could argu e that why the Li n g Sh u chooses not to give us Points, is because the Ling Shu did not want people to fall into the p attern of l ooking at acupuncture treatments as protocol s, but rather to understand the process of what is going on, and to be able to di scern from palpati on, by any other eval uati on that one uses, to figure out the Point that is unique to the individual. So, yes, it is easy to say that Wind Cold is Tai Yang, or that someone has a Tai Yang stage, but for that person, there are specific Tai Yang Points that have more meaning for them, or might need to be palpated . So this is where histori ans as well as cli nicians have argued that the Ling Sim l eft it open ended because it wants the clinician to deci d e . It wants the clinician to be a medi cal thinker, not a medical technician. Whereas one of the cri ti ci sms of ]ia Yi Jing is now, by giving you the Point selecti on, you are now becoming a medical technician. So this i s obvi ousl y an on-going concern among practitioners today . And while it might be useful in the beginning, because it sati sfies the ego that, you have ”for this, use that" . But for those who want to further expand, because there are going to be si tuati ons where ”for this, you use that”， and ”that” does not work. So where do you go next? And that is where medi cal thinkers really have to
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come in. You have to look at the concepts, the etiology, the progression, and factor all that in to perhaps come up with a new treatment strategy. So that is the most comm on cri ti cism that is given for the Jia Yi J ing . Most people definitely consi der i t one of the most i mportant texts .
Huang Fu Mi has another association, as well . Huang Fu Mi was someone who d abbled in alchemy. In fac仁 he got very sick with alchem y . He took these al chemical elixirs and he got severely ill . As a resul t, you are going to see that part of his orientation in writing about acupuncture is going to lose, to a greater degree, the spiri tu al dimension . Essenti ally, he is no l onger going to be in the same level as the Ling Sim, in my opinion. The Ling Shu ori entates as a Spiri tual Compass. There i s still that idea of trying to return back to the Shen . Huang Fu Mi, m ost likel y because of his negative experiences wi th al chemy, is really going to begin to abandon that. He is going to take more of a Confuciani st role, that those thi ngs are more of a superstitiou s nature, and that one really should not engage in those types of practices. So again, with that, you are not going to see gold and silver Needles, which we might see with Ge Ho ng’ s wri ting. You are not going to see a lot m ore descriptions abou t . . . I mean there are s ti l l descriptions o f the Shen, you cannot l eave that behind . . . b u t there’s not going to be as much of an emphasi s on that as we see wi th the Ling Shu . So while he' s organized the material of the Ling Sim very neatly, there are certain el ements of the Ling Sim that seem lacking in hi s writings. While he expand s on things that are in the Ling Sim, l ike Body Typing, so still there are Constitu tional aspects, he is also now saying that there could be exemplary types of people, the Balanced Body, whi ch is very Confucianis t i n that end . S o this i s a component that w e see in his writings. And again, you see it more and more in the later chapters . That i s, in those ch apters that more likely he wrote later on, there seems to be a di fferent tone that is coming from hi s book. G.
Wang Xi, Wang Slzu He ( 265 - 317 A.CE.)
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Mai Jing
The next person we have is Wang Sim He, who i s noted for writing the Mai Jing . Agai n, we talked about that term, Mai, whi ch i s very different than the Pulse, the word Mai of his time, in terms of a written character, is different than the Mai of Li Shi Zhen ’s tim e, when Li Slzi Zhen wrote the M ai Jing. But in any case, we know that Wang Sim He addresses this concept. Thi s is a concept that was also very elusive in the Su Wen, as well as the Ling Slzu, namely the Pulse . And becau se the Nan Jing had already been written, and the Nan Jing is the book that orientates to a closer observation of the Pulse, if anything one woul d say that the Nan Jing was a very Five Element approach, and they devote a lot of time to Pulse taking. So now Wang Shu He i s further elaborating on the Pulses. He creates 3 1 Pulses, unlike the 27 or 28 Pulses of Li Shi Zhen. Defi ni tel y peopl e have contended that it was this wri ting on the Pul ses that eventu ally influenced the Arab world, in terms of their Pulse taking.
Wang Shu He i s also argued to have been the person that most likely tran smitted the teachings of the Shang Han Lun tradi tion. If that i s true, we v,roul d probably have some discomfort with that. That is to say, look at the time 1 34
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period he is living in, 265-31 7 A.CE. If he is transmi tting and writing down the Shang Han Lwz, and Huang Fu Mi, even though he wrote the Jin Yi J ing in the latter part of his life, talks abou t the Slwng Han Lun, there is a big gap. The dates don’ t seem to make too mu ch sense, unless, Wang S h u He was writing about the Slzang Han Lwz very early on. So this is where som e peopl e are uncomfortable wi th saying that Wa ng Sh u He is the person who transmitted the Shang Ha n Lu n tradition, because they u se H uang Fu Mi as the figure whose text appears to have teachings from the Sl w ng Han Lwz already in it. How could Wa ng Sim He then have written it, when he comes much l ater on than Huang Fu Mi. So thi s is again more of a hi storical debate.
Wang Sim
organizes the Pulses in terms, not only the Pul se qu aliti es, but he real l y begins the process of really talki ng abou t Pulses as a way to resonate and discern what is going on internally in the human body, in terms of the Z a n g Fu . I tri ed to give you the correl ation abou t that, abou t the Blood and feeling the Bl ood and then seeing that relationship to the actual Organs that it is connected to. So definitely we have that aspect. If we were to study the Pul se Classi c, there are a lot of components abou t Wang Slzu He ’ s work that one might say influences the diagnosis that is going to take place in subsequent generations, becau se it’ s in subsequent generations that the Pul se that he describes begins to be changed . When I talk about Li S h i Zhen, that’ s when I really would compare \,Ya n g Shu He 's Pulse taking with what happens in the Ming Dynasty, and why the Pulses are not exa ctly the same any longer. Cru cial to 队＇a ng Sim He is gave Pul ses al so for Meridians. He has Pulses for Eight Extraordinary Vessel s in his wri tings, whi ch Li Shi Zhen also uses, bu t Li Slzi Zhen changes i t slightl y in rel ati onship to his own thinking . So there i s also the idea that you can measure the Meri dians throu gh the Pulses as well, and not just the Za n g Fu . Again, the Za ng Fu are not that interesting at that time among Cl assical clinicians. H.
He
Clzao Yuan Fa ng (550 - 630 A . C E . ) & Zhu Bing Yuan Hou L u n
C h a o Yu a n Fa ng li ves from the Sui into the Ta ng Dynasty, the beginning of the Ta ng . And hi s famous book is the Zlzu B ing Yu a n Hou Lzm . Again, the fact that he uses the word L u n cou l d have meant that he went and he di d a survey. He went to a di fferent clinicians, asking about their clinical experiences. ”Tell me about eczema， ” or what we would call Zh u . ”Tell me about these abcesses. Tell m e about Rebelliuos Q i . ” He interviews all these people and they orally are transmi 忧ing the information 出at he now compiles like an encycl opedia, and says that this is where all these etiologies come from; these are the symptoms and this i s the nature of the problem . And i t is a very important textbook, because it includes all aspects of m edicine. There are gynecol ogi cal symptoms. There’s pediatri cs. There’s infectiou s diseases. He even has discussions about worms and all that. So it’ s very elaborate . Very often Chinese historians go back and say that he was abl e to already describe di seases that we . . . he talks about skin diseases for exampl e, that are caused by insects that are invisibl e to the eye. So he talks about lice, and conditions of 出at type. So he has a l ot, and dermatology is a m aj or aspect. So hundreds and hundreds of symptoms and diseases are being presented by Chao Yuan Fang.
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Chao Yua n Fang was a Tai Yi, by the way . He was an Imperi al Physici an . That means h e h a s a l o t o f clout. If you are the Imperial Physician and you write thi s book, thi s book becomes l i ke the manual that everyone reads from . He originates some ideas that become the basic theme or skeleton of many Chinese concepts from that point on. He is the one who originates the idea that Phlegm comes from the Spleen, if you buy into 出at theory. Most of us believe that’ s 廿ue when we study Chinese Medicine. He’ s the one that sai d that. And you’II see there are going to be other tra ditions that say， “That’ s false . There’ s no su ch thing. Phlegm is produced by the Liver, not by the Spleen ." Some people would say， ”No, that’ s wrong too . Phlegm is produced by the Kidneys . ” And what they are basically saying is Zhang Zi He, the Founder of the School of Attacking and Purging, says Phl egm is produced by the Liver. Zhang Jing Yue, one of the Patri archs, he’ s not the founder, of the Ming Men School, is the one who says Phl egm is produced by the Ki dney s. Not everyone agrees with that, but he’s early on . All the people I just mentioned come later. It’ s trying to revamp the thinking of the past. So as a Tai Yi, as an Imperial Physici an, he says that Phlegm is produ ced from the Spleen, which goes to the Lungs, we think of as Dampness . He i s also the one that says that Water, thi s image of thermodynami cs, can harden and become a rock. He believes that stones, basically occur due to the hard ening of Water, whi ch means that you have to now Soften Hardness and Dissipate this Mass. So it is Chao Yuan Fang who creates that terminology that we u se in herb al m edicine: Softening Hardness to Dissipate a Mass. Th at’ s from that imagery of Vv ater becoming a mass, a stone. So that comes from Chao Yuan Fa ng . He’ s noted for a number of l i ttl e contributions that obviou sly have influenced Chinese Medicine on a m叫or scale. Chao Yuan Fang is also responsible for the notion that diseases do n o t necessarily have to have a progression. S o h e is starting to challenge a li ttle of Zhang Zhong Jing ’ s writing, saying that certain diseases do not have to have a progression . What is sometimes interpreted from hi s statement, in a much more conservative way, not to rattle the Slzang Han Lwz tradition, is we all know that when you have a condi ti on where something is attacking the body, the notion is that it goes from one stage to the other, if it started from this particul ar stage. But, l et’ s assume, let’ s say I j ust made the association that the Lung Meridian is the beginning of a disease, then it goes to the Large Intestine. It goes to the Stomach. It goes to the Spleen . Obviously, we don’t think about that when we do acupuncture . We don’t think of the progressi on, where it came from, the previous Meri dian or what Meri dian it is manifested at, and whi ch Meridian it is going to go to. Because, a lot of times, what we might say is that . . . let’ s say if the Lungs were weak, we’re not going to see something going to the Lungs. It goes to bypass the Lungs and go directly to the Large Intestine. Or l et’s say, in another way, the fact that you had Wei Level, Ying level and Yua n level, the assumption is if you get exposed to a condition, it goes from the Wei to the Ying to the Yuan . But let’ s say you had a wild night ou t on the town, a lot of sex and booze and whatever. So you weaken the Ying Qi and Yuan Qi, so when you came out into a col d early morning, after p artying into the early morning hours, when a col d breeze comes, it is not going to go to the Wei l evel . You weakened 1 36
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the Bl ood from all the al cohol . You weakened your Jing from all that sex . I t’ s going t o go right into these l evel s . So h e says that you don’ t have to have a progression theory to develop a certain disease . It can bypass other levels very qui ckly too, acutel y . So this is where, now, we can use that information . He i s an Imperi al Physici an and says that the Meri di ans are n o t a Continu ous Loop, but it represents j u st a fine way of looking at the condition at the point that it is at. That means we don’t necessarily have to say that it went from the Lungs to 出e Large Intestine. We can simply say that the way it is, right now, is at the l evel of Stom ach. In other words, if I say that the Meridians are a Continuou s Loop, I can then argue that there are not 1 2 Meridi ans, but just one Meridi an, because everything connects to everything else. So why should I need to know w hich Meridian to treat? I could treat one Point and it \Vill affect the entirety of the whole 1 2 Meri dian Channel . So why can’ t I j u st pick one Point and select that one Point to treat everything and anything, which is by the way a tradtition of thi nking in Chinese Medicine. There are still traditions today that will argue that if you are really intimate with di agnosis and knowing the person, you will be able to pi ck ou t what that one Point i s . That’s a tradition that you see especi ally in France . Some French a cupun cturi sts are into that, which i s influencing some o f the Italian acupuncturists . Now if that argument is correct, which we can assume it might be, then it doesn't make sense that we need to have the 1 2 Meridians. But what the counter argument is, is that what you are really doing is not really saying that there i s one continuous Meridi an, you are really trying t o fine tune yourself t o see where, in whi ch Meridi an it i s . ＼付hat Point is it at, and that’ s the Point that you are l ooking at, which still is fol l owing a movement theory . So what you are doing i s you are saying the snapshot o f it, right there and then is where the pathology is, and that’s why you are picki ng that Point. So it still is, any Point is still a specific Point. And what he is really saying is th at when you are l ooking at the 1 2 Meridians, the selection of Meridian is to take something that is continuous and take it ou t of the movement, ou t of time . You are looking at the Meridi an in a way as a tangent out of time. That is, if it’ s continuous, but once I take it and say, ”Well, thi s i s the Meridian, wi thin this loop, that I need to look at." So what you are doing is seeing something ou t of the perspective of time. And that, by the way, is the Classical depi cti on of time, as a circle with a tangent coming out of it, because we know time i s really continuous. The fact that I look at that is what I am doing is taking the tangent out of that circle and saying thi s is the time that we are at and thi s is the time we should fini sh . So that means we are giving it importance. That’ s all . Thi s is one of Chao Yuan Fa ng ’ s philosophi cal components that people have looked at. And from there, we don’t have to now necessarily foll ow a Meri dian closel y in terms of Transmi ssion . He’ s basically saying, ”Disease could be, this i s vvhat it is.” You just have to treat it for what it is. You don’ t have to think abou t where i t came from, where it’s going, even though, noti ce the paradox of i t， ”etiology, and symptoms of diseases .” To know the cause doesn’t necessarily allow you to know the treatment, is his contenti on.
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I.
Sun Si 儿1iao (590 - 682 A .CE.)
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Qian Jin Yao Fang
The next person is one that I reall y want to devote most of my discussion , because j ust his contributi ons could take several to, S u n Si Miao 拚、 思 逸 w eekend s . H e ’ s probabl y the most respected of a l l the Ta ng Dynasty practitioners and definitely another one that has been personified into a God of Chinese Medicine. Sun Si Miao retired to Er Mei Slzan . He is said to be a physical Immortal . And again, even the dates that I give you, to a lot of practi ti oners, it is conservative. It is suggested that he died at the age of 92. There are dates that m ake him 200 years old, by the way . So he is very often one of these individuals that people, still today, say i s probably living in Er Mei Shan. And remember, the notion here is that he would l ook younger and younger, because he is retarding his aging. So don’t go to Er Mei Slzan looking for an ol d m an. Look for a young chil d . That is probably S u n Si Miao . In any case, there are temples erected to him . In fact, if you go to Xi A n, one of the capitals of China, in the early days known as Chang A n, you ’ H see a temple even today erected to Sun Si Miao . And you will see temples for him in Er Mei Shan as wel l .
S u n Si Miao is noted for writing Qian Jin Yao Fang and the supplement to thi s text. Sun Si Miao ini ti al l y was very frai l . A s a child, he was very weak and consequentl y, he studied medicine primarily to enhance his own health. So he is highly into sel f healing, Preventative medicine . In hi s textbook, the Qian Jin Fa ng, he has more than 700 herbs listed . So you can see that his own textbook already has a lot of herbs. Even though it is not a Materia Medica, he has a lot of herbs listed, especially focusing on proper harvesting times. He is also noted for introdu cing som e herbs that we don’t see in the Materia Medi ca . One of his herbs is Cang Er Zi, Xanthium . That appears in his textbook, which l ater on, we incorporate into the Materi a Medica . So that’ s from him and his findings on Cang E r Zi as a very important herb to open the sinus region, to get ri d of Phlegm, 'vhi ch again, is one of the interests that he is developing. Now Sun Si Miao is noted for the statement that I m entioned already, that he developed medicine into a comprehensive approach . That is, whatever you are practicing, you shoul d learn to integrate it with other medical systems. So he uses the term Ke 科 . Ke means developing a body of information. That body of information allows you to have comprehensive knowl edge. So wi th that word comes things like Wai Ke, External Medi cine, or Fu Ke, gynecology, _ Pi Fu Ke, dermatology, Clzan Ke, obstetrics, So he's the one that, in fact, in the 1 9th Century, the Chinese devel oped a new term known as Ke Xue, becau se the Chinese now were beginning to be exposed to Western science . So ,,vhen you go to a Chinese university today and you w ant to study physi cs, physics is called Ke Xue, science is called Ke He So that is a science that we are trying to develop . But this term comes from the medical establishment in China . I wrote five things that are important in S u n Si Miao, because I want to bring back another element to the Tang Dynasty that he i s responsible for. He is often referred to as the most hum anistic of all the practitioners of Chinese Medicine. In his wri tings, we see the ideas of Resonance. This i dea is going to be 1 38
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el aborated upon in the Song Dynasty . There is going to be a b ook in the So ng Dynasty called Gan Ying Jing 戚 庭 经 出at is associated with Lao Zi. Lao Zi, in one of these stories, came to this person. He dreamt and Lao Zi gave him this treati se called the Treatise on Resonance . I t i s actually a Neo-Daoi时， more of a Confucianist and Dnois t blend, a textbook about doing good things, and all of that stuff. We' l l talk abou t th at when we get to the Song era . This is one of the phil osophi cal components. Then we have Xin 信 ， Faith, or Belief. Fa ng 防 we kn ow that already, Preventi on . Ren 仁 ， whi ch becomes the key word in medi ci ne, Compa ssi on or Ben evol ence, depending on whether you are a Buddhist or a Confu cia n is t. B u d d hi sts ten d to tran sl ate R e n as Compassion . Conjucian is ts transl ate it as Benevolence. And, Bian 链 ， Changes. What you are seeing i s, in S u n Si M iao, he essentially gives a moral dimension in hi s wri tings, m u ch m ore speci fi c th an any other pra cti tioner in Chinese Medicine. He u ses the Su Wen . He is well learned in the Classics to support his premi ses . For example, when we look at the concept of Resonance, he says that when the client and the practitioner are both in Resonance, both in this idea of Gan Ying 戚 庭 , then illness can no longer linger. The client and the practitioner, becau se the practi tioner is Resonating healing, then the client shoul d be Resonating healing . So when they both are Resonating with each other, there shoul d be no longer illness. In fact, he quotes from the Su Wen . In the Su Wen, Chapter 14 says that acupuncture and herbs are only one aspect of a treatment. So even though he is saying we shou l d develop comprehensive medicine, he is really saying that there is more to it than just learning about it. So in Chapter 14, it says， ”Even though acupuncture and herbs are only one aspect of a treatment, to truly heal, one needs to Resonate with their cli ents .” That’ s in Chapter 14 in the Su 川1en . And the Su Wen says that the cli ent also needs to have con fi dence that one can overcome the illness, or el se the Spirit will be Sca ttered . Temper one’s em otions or else the illness cannot be treated . So there i s a li ttle Confu cian ist in there too. Again, we said that the Su Wen has both. This is Sun Si Miao quoti ng from the Su Wen . Furthermore, \Ve kn mv th at that’ s tru e because, not from Sun Si 儿1iao, bu t from the Su Wen, it talks about, " the pre-requisites of a healer. ” Som e of you might remember 出is in the Su Wen discu ssion. I t’ s Chapter 25 of the Su Wen. It says, " I f you wanted to be a healer, there are five prerequi sites. ” On the top of that list of prerequi sites, the First is the Uni on of Mind, your thoughts and your Spirit. So your focus and your intent has to be together. I’m intending on this, and I’m going to focus on thi s . Uni on of Mind and Spirit. That’ s the first pre requisite. The Second pre-requisite, they say, is to Cultivate in accordance with the Dao . Understand that certain things have to have a cycli cal component, and tha t sometimes a disease, too, can h ave a season and that maybe you are not treating them at the right time; so don’t put so much pressure on yourself that it has to happen right now . Th at is true, because you have Union of Mind and Spirit, but sometimes what happens is that things also have their own inner cycle, their own inner Dao . And then, in Chapter 25 of the Su Wen, the Third pre1 39
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requi site is that you need to Know Herbs. The Fourth pre-requisi te is that you need to Know Acupuncture. The Fi fth and last one is Di agnosis. So Diagnosis is the least important in the Su Wen among the pre-requi sites of a healer. What is m o s t i m p ortant is your i n tenti onali ty, y our focus, your concentrati o n . Everything else is second ary t o that. So S u n Si 儿!J. iao i s trying t o bring this awareness back to the clinician, that yes, you are learning all of thi s, and you are trying to become comprehensive so that you . . . , in other words, it is almost like a 甘i ck. If you know everything that is out there to heal peopl e, the reason why it is not working is not because of the system . It’s because your intention i s not very strong, because there is nothing else to l earn . At least you coul d say， ”Oh gee, m aybe I should learn hom eopathy today” if you find that acupuncture is not w orking . There are some of us that go through those periods, because most likely what you are finding i s that the things you are learning are not working, but it ultim ately is saying it is not the system . It is the practitioner. The second thing that we see among of the them es that we can extrapolate from S u n Si Miao is the notion of Faith, Xi n f言 . Again, he says if the client does not believe in the healing, then no matter what the practitioner does, the client will not heal . All healing must com e from within . Another notion that everything really comes from within. The notion of sel f-empowerment, that we have to really believe or surrender to the process of healing . That's thi s idea that we have to have fai th that we can heal, not that " thi s” will heal or " that” will heal . That’ s just having faith in an agent. And of course, a lot of peopl e fail to reali ze that the agent is oneself. This is what Sun Si Miao essentially argues. I t is not j u st the herb . That’ s an agent. I t' s not the Needl e. That’s an agent. It is not the food . That’ s an agent. It’ s not the exercise. That’ s an agent. It’ s ultimately yoursel f. And sometim es, we all know that, I mean back then, back now, when you go to a practi tioηer, you expect an agent to heal you . If they don’t do anything， ” Gee, I l eft there, and they didn’t do anything. Am I healed ？” And some peopl e, depending on how you market yourself, can have a practice where you market yourself where you can heal without doing anything . You heal through your presence. You are a Shaman . Even a Shaman is acting as an agent. They are making some sound for you . And you say, "Okay, that sound is going to heal me.” But the notion that the person who doesn’ t do anything can heal you, for most of us, we have a hard time buying into that, because you still expect an agent. What Sun Si Miao i s reall y saying is, what you reall y want to provoke is th e person ' s own Faith that th ey can heal . All the agents are second ary . Because S u n Si M iao him self was a Daois t, he is saying learn all of these, but I’m also trying to show you that he is reall y saying， ”Don’t learn any of these things either. Really have Faith in what you are doing an d that' s all that really counts.” And of course, Fa ng 防 ， Prevention, that’ s a prim ary theme of Sun Si Miao . I t ’ s a pri mary theme of that time: preventative medicine. Diet, w e talked
a b o u t him recommending d i et, in p a rti cul ar being very s tri ct about contrai ndi cati ons of diet. W e see him talking about that. We see hi m recommending gymnastics, or what people translate as gymnastics is Dao Y巾， exerci ses. He talks about doing massage. More importantl y, he talks about 1 40
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really sleeping, keeping to regular hours, which as practitioners, we often fail to do that ourselves . So he also emphasi zes that we must keep to regul ar hours and not exhaust our vitality, our Qi. So that’ s another aspect that we see with Su11 Si
Miao. Compassion, Ren 仨 ： Compassion here, basically means that . . . it i s almost like Confucimzis ts in m any ways, that p art of being compassi onate is that you work wi th the individu al, rather than wi th the condition. You allow the individual to be themselves, withou t superimposing upon them your own judgment or your own speculation， “Oh this person is not going to do so well, because in my previous cl i nical case, I had someone similar to that. They di dn’ t reall y respond . So thi s person probabl y is not going to respond." ＼月vhat have you done? You sabotage yourself. And he says, "Don’t do that. Let the person be that person and do not superimpose specul ation and jud gment based on your own previ ous clinical experi ence . ” Be in the m om ent, because Compassioη is really a moment to mom ent thing . It’s not， ” Oh, I cultivate Compassi on . " In whi ch case you might l ook for actions th at a l l ow you to d em onstrate Compassion . That’ s not Compassion to him . Compassion to him is, when you don’t speculate and you don’t ju dge, you are already being Compassi onate. You are being open. That’ s what he is basi cally trying to advocate. The l ast component that he, perhaps, talks about the most is B ian 缓 Thi s goes back to the Daois t i dea that everything in th e worl d i s constantly Changing. Everything is cycli cal . And to understand, B ian means to understand that everyone gets si ck. That’ s a human condition that everyone vvill get sick. Some people get som e illness that is very minor. I can just hit m y hand and th at’ s in pain. Th at’s minor, and I don ’ t even go to a physi ci a n . But, neverthel ess, it’s a form of illness . I t’ s a form of sickness. So everyone, as part of the cycle, gets sick. And \Ve have to acknowledge that as the human condition. \!Ve can’t say， ”No one shou l d get sick. And that’s wh at the rol e of a physician is, to m ake sure that no one gets si ck. ” He says that i s going against nature. That’ s not understanding B ian, not understanding Change. The second component, in relationship to Change, he says, is that illness i s a call to Attention. When we get ill, it is telling us that we need to pay Attention. And that’ s what he is saying, that you need to pay Attenti on to your life, to the things that you are doing in your li fe and how and why things might be going wrong . So it really is about looking at your l i fe and seeing the things tha t need to Change. Wind a s "the cause of hundred s of diseases”， Change, as that whi ch provokes a betterment of one ’ s li fe, through Win d . And the l ast thing, ultimatel y if we are looking at illness as a natural cycle of hum an condition, Death is also a natural process of li fe, so coming to terms wi th Death and Dying. These are all rich in Sun Si Miao’s wri tin g . That’ s \vhy h e i s responsible, at l east for provoking the cultivation o f a practi tioner. Previous to that, when we read other books, they are kind of giving us m ore theory, but it doesn't provoke us to cul tivate ourselves. S u n Si Miao does that. He m akes us begin to think about, what is our role as a healer? \Vhat is ou r rol e as a clini cian? What is the role of our patients? And be abl e to understand it beyond the illness and the theori es, the knowledge, the modalities that we basically practice . So this i s from the teachings of Sun Si Miao. 。New En g land School
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J.
Wang Tao (675 - 755 A.CE斗 ＆ Wn i Tai P i Yao
Wa ng Tao is the grandson of one of the chief ministers . Wang Tao i s responsibl e for writing the Wai Tai Pi Yao, what i s often referred to as The Essenti al s from the Imperial Library . During thi s period of time that Wang Tao
was living, we have the establishment of the Imperi al Medical College, an actual college where we are now teaching physi ci ans. It’ s not a very bi g college. It’ s during the Song Dynasty that the Tai Ping coll ege becomes the biggest one . But there is thi s Imperi al Medi cal College that is being created in Xi An and what they have is thi s Imperial Formul ary . The Imperi al Formu lary is what I m ean by Essen ti al s from the Imperial Library, where what he did was he looked at all the books that were in the library, and he began to survey and compile and compile, and came up with a major treatise that summarizes all the Speci alties. And that treati se was wri tten near the end of his life at 752 A.CE. Thi s is obviousl y influenced by Su11 Si Miao, because Sun Si Miao started the process of organizing Specialties. Now what Wang Tao was doing is further developing that. But Wang Tao is going to have a bi as that is going to influence practitioners. Remember, his bias is acupuncture can be dangerous. So he di scourages Needl ing and instead recommends using Moxibu stion . He is the one, again, when you see his book or you read his book, basically the treatments are all with Moxibustion recommendations. And he is the one who makes the statement 出at Moxa that has been kept, that has been allowed to dry for three years has the greatest efficacy . Actu ally, his words are that it treats all di seases . So three years of all owing the Moxa to dry, after harvesting . Some people actuall y interpret that as having a Moxa plant that has been grown for three years. I d on’t necessarily think that was what he meant. K.
Wang Bing (71 0 - 804 A .CE.)
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His Edi tions, Commentaries
The last person, as we are coming to our end now is Wang B i ng . Wa n g B ing i s more associated wi th doing additi ons and commentaries. He lives during the Tan g Dynasty . He' s the person in 762 A.CE., who redoes the whol e Nei Jing. He edits the whol e Nei Jing. And, as I said, it’ s been said that he added his own chapters to the Nei Jing. He added his own chapters to the Nei Jing, so that he revamps the Nei Jing to some degree and a d ded hi s interest, whi ch was Astrologi cal Acupuncture, into the Nei Jing . Again, he is not only a commentator on m edical writings. He also has commentaries on Daois t writings as well . So there is a versi on of the Dao De Ji ng that is based on Wang Bing. So he does a number of translations or commentaries of Classical writings, adding in his own emphasis. L.
Cui Zlzi Di
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Steaming Bones
Now it is also important to note that, even though I didn’t put it here, that there is another practi tioner that is well known during 出e Tang Dynasty. Cui Zlzi was a practitioner who observed a condition that was happening Di 催 知 楝 1 42
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in the country . And he’ s the one who basi cally developed the theory about G u , Stea ming Bone. S o the Steaming Bone syndrome, in term s of Chi nese Medicine begins to be understood by Cui Zhi Di of the Tang Dynasty .
Zlzeng 骨 蒸
He' s the one who i s also responsible for not only understanding about Steaming Bone Syndrome, but he' s the one who is responsible for traveling and observing throughout Chi n a . And he sees the famines, chil dren that become impoverished, observing that they had these skinny hands and pot bellies that we see. And he l abel s that as Steaming B one Syndrome. The maj or Poi nt, in terms of acupuncture, that develops for treating that is going to be the use of HT6 as the m aj or Point, and also Du-14. Those are the two major Points. Basically you have to get the heat to come ou t of the bones. And that means that you have to get it to come ou t of things that are Transmi tting it into the Organs, into the Bones, whi ch means along the Sim Points . So the m 司 or Point where Heat, YanK, accumulates after m oving to the Zang Fu would be at Du-1 4. The reason I ’ m m enti oning him is, already now there is a movem ent emphasizing that Heat could be very destru ctive. Because that is going to be a movement that we will see. And I want to suggest to you that i n the Tang Dynasty, there are already some individuals who are beginning to talk about that type of patholo gy . Furthermore, the idea o f using HT-6, remember HT-6 is the Xi-Cleft Point. It is Yin Xi, the Yin Cl eft. The notion here i s that when you look at Steaming Bone Syndrome, in m odern Chinese Medici ne, we tend to think of i t as an imbalance between Heart and Ki dneys, coming from hi m . The notion here is that something goes into the Bones, and where is it coming from ? It has to come from the l evel of the Blood, from the l evel of the Vessels, to enter into the Bone, which is by nature between the Ki dneys and the Heart. And rather than l ooking at Ki dne；吃 he is using the Du to ad dress that, Du-1 4 . The Heart, he’s l ooking at it . . . instead of the L u o, as commentators expected . . . he’s going to the Xi Cl eft Point. Because, when you see Steaming Bone syndrome in the way he's seeing it, thi s i s an emergency situ a ti on . You have chil dren who have . . . remember, Steaming Bone i n mod ern tran s l a ti on, m o d ern cl i ni cians think of i t a s tuberculosi s . The histori cal record s suggest the u s e Du-1 4 and HT-6 were very effective in treating Steami ng Bone syndrom e . That’ s th e reason why we are using the Xi Cl eft Point rather than the Luo Point to deal with Blood, because also Xi Cleft Points deal wi th "ravines”， where Water accumulates. In this case, what we are suggesting is Heat. So he is another practi ti oner who is important in thi s particul ar time period . We will see an extension of that i dea of Steaming Bone taking pl a ce subsequently after thi s peri od of time, when they are going to invent the idea of Gao H uang . Most of you are familiar wi th Gao Huang Shu . Zhuang Chao �主 掉 is going to be influential in developing this idea of Gao Huang 膏 育 , whi ch gets taken up by another cli nici an in a l a ter tim e, where they talk about G a o Huang Slzu , where they wri te the book on Gao H u ang Sim (Tiu Gao Huang Sh u Xue E且. And where all of those things are starting to pave the way between Heart 1 43
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and Kidneys, Heart and Kidneys, Heart and Ki dneys, so what happens is you are going to start looking at the Heart again. And we start to develop this idea about the Peri cardium coming back into focus, where the Pericardium is going ot be a m ajor component that peopl e are going to say we should treat instead of the Heart. So again, that shift to the Pericardium, because of the beginning of the rel a ti onship between Ki dneys and the H eart, or more importantl y, we are starting to think about Jing. So slowly giving us to that criteria about Jing. M.
Sun Si Miao
&
H i s Theory o f Phlegm
The other thing I wanted to mention about Sun Si Miao is he is developing the theory about Phlegm . Sun Si Miao is cru cial i n organizing the thinking about Phl egm, and he i s going to say something that is consi dered pretty radical at that tim e . He says that the symptoms that appear to be due to a Possessi on or a Ghost, i s instead due to Phl egm . So he i s really saying that instead of treating Ghosts, you could treat Phl egm . And he develops the 13 Ghost Points that are named after him i n acupuncture Point books . But a lot of that comes from his Phl egm investi gation. So that means that you don ’ t necessarily use the Ghost Points to get ri d of a Ghost; you can Ghost Points to get rid of Phlegm . Just be reminded that when you study the Ghost Points, keep in mind that there is an order and you need to follow that order. Sometimes when you see them being l isted in some textbooks, they are just giving you . . . okay, if we go to the 1 2 Meri dians, which i s the first Lung Point, that i s i n those 1 3 Ghost Points. So they might start out wi th LU-1 1 . That’s not the first Ghost Point. So you are not going to use LU-1 1 in the treatment as a Ghost Point. You have to use D u-26. That would be the Point that you have to use as part of the Ghost treatment. So there is a theory behind all of that that he devel ops . Are we clear? So the same thing goes for the 12 Star Points of 儿tfa Dan Yang. ＼月vi th those, you have to follow the order. And we’11 see Ma Dan Yang when we get to our Song Dynasty di scussi on, whi ch is the next time we meet. So are there any qu esti on s before we come to an end? Question: That issue of Ghost or Phlegm, was it a clear distincti on ei ther or? Or was there also an understan ding of because of the presence of Phl egm, an individual was more vulnerable to the influence of a Ghost?
Answer： 阳ght. In other word s, remember, Clzao Yuan Fang says that Dampness creates Phl egm . So already Chao Yua n Fang is developing the theory to some degree about Phl egm . Now what S u n Si Miao does i s he is going to take that notion of Phlegm and expand upon that, but he noti ced that Phl egm produces a lot of S h e n di sturbances, whi ch mistakenly, or people say mistakenly, can be construed as a Possession. So he is saying that when you are looking at Ghost Possession, that it is really not the same, but it can be due to Phlegm . So i n one case, the Phlegm aspect is originating from Dampness. He still believes in Clzao Yuan Fang ’ s idea. Basically it means some type of disha口口ony in the digestive system, some type of di sharmony i n the Spleen, some type of disharmony in the family. And he beli eves, because he is a Daois t, that it is due 1 44
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to all that Confu cian pressure. The Conjucian is ts who focu s on the family, that, from a Daois t point of vi ew, i s Earth . Earth i s fam i l y, the boundaries, the responsibi lities that we uphold and the moral aspect is the Lu ng . So if I can’ t uphold that responsibility, I can’ t live up to that, then that’s going to show up as Phlegm which goes to the Lungs to say that I can’t live up, because Lungs are moral responsibility. So then he' s reall y saying 出at given an environment where we see . . . and again, he' s living at a time when som e Daois ts had patrons, the Emperors were patrons of Daoism, and usually near the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Confu cia n is ts take back that rol e . So he i s really saying that all of these Confu cian responsibilities, I have to do this, I have to do that, that’ s like a Spleen boundary . If y ou can ’ t up hol d that, we b ecom e Damp and then we get Phlegmati c and that can cause Slzen di sturbances . So he bel i eved th at’s em oti onally rel ated to di etary factors . I mean, Spleen, which physi cally is rel ated to the di et, and when we can’ t live up to the responsibi lity, the general tendency is we gravi ta te towards food as a \vay to suppress. And most likel y, as S u n Si Miao pointed out, we gravitate towards the wrong foods, poor food combi nations. We go ou t and have a burger. Here' s your beef and onions. You are eating that way, and he says that creates worms, which is another category that is associated wi th Ghosts in Chinese Medicine . So they are all interrel ated in some ways, bu t he is sayi ng that is doesn’t have to be an External enti ty coming in, but rather being too caught up in moral responsibility . And thi s is what he is also trying to say about the clinician, that if you get into the notion that you have to save the worl d, because to a Conjucianis t, that is fil i al pi ety, i t’ s your duty to save the worl d, to benefi t the whol e of humani ty, then you fail to reali ze that the healing has nothing to do with you . It has to do \Vith the cl ient. That goes back to the Daois t concept. He is trying to rattle the foundati on of som e of the cli nicians of the time. But because Daois m is at a great height during hi s peri od, most people bu y it. Fortunately he lived at that time. I’m quite sure if he lived in a Confucia1 1 time, we would probably have bad things to say about Su11 Si Miao . He woul dn’ t be revered anymore, because he i s not respected at the tim e that he wrote that. Even though vve might appreciate it l ater on . But most likel y, \ve probably would have put a black mark on him already . Are there any other questi ons then before w e come t o a n end ? Thank you all for your time. I hope this has been informative. Thank You . For those of you coming from out of tmvn, have a good trip back to wherever you came from .
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